The Letters Never Read
by SouthernStars
Summary: "You need to read these Troy, before being apart kills you two." She left him six months ago without a reason why, now her letters sit in front of him and he wonders if the letters he never read hold the reason as to why she left.
1. Chapter 1: Receiving

Disclaimer: I do not own 'High School Musical' or any related characters nor do I own Taylor Swift's lyrics.

A/N: Okay, new project, totally different to what I've tried before. I actually came up with the idea when I was listening to Tim McGraw by Taylor Swift. I am going through another Taylor Swift phase and it's driving my friends insane. Truthfully, I just like listening to her songs. At the moment, I'm only listening to Matchbox Twenty and Taylor Swift, which is a bit of an odd combination but it's good. Anyway, enjoy this new story of mine.

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_**The Letters Never Read**_

**Chapter One: Receiving **

Troy Bolton had never been very good at getting up early. He'd always struggled with it on and off through out the year and today was no exception. He didn't know what time it was, nor did he particularly care. What he knew was that it was probably some ungodly hour and that if the person banging on the door didn't leave him alone soon, he was going to have a very bad moment, very soon.

Hearing someone shout, Troy opened one eyes and was met with cheerful sunlight that made him slam his eye shut again. It was sunny. This meant that he should probably get up and go for a run. Instead, he picked up the pillow lying beside him and pulled it over his head, blocking out the sunlight and, hopefully the incessant knocking which hadn't stopped since he'd woken up.

Instead of disappearing, like Troy had hoped it would, the knocking became more insistent and louder. Though Troy wasn't sure whether that was because it was in his head or because the knocking had actually gotten closer to his second floor bedroom. Either way the knocking was beginning to get on his nerves.

Hearing his door open, Troy flew up and threw the pillow at whomever it was that had dared disturb his peace. "What the fuck do you want?" Troy exclaimed as his pillow slammed into the face of his best friend, who looked shocked that Troy was awake.

"Dude, I thought I'd have to throw water on you or something to get you up." Chad Danforth's shocked tone was not something Troy wanted to hear this morning. Instead he groaned.

"Chad, why the hell are you at my house, now?" Because he didn't have a clock in his bedroom, Troy wasn't sure what time it was but because he was awake, he assumed it was early.

"Because you, my friend, got mail delivered to me." There was something about Chad's tone that had Troy's slowly awakening brain perking slightly. Throwing back the covers, Troy pulled himself over to the edge of the bed and picked up a discarded shirt.

"Why would I get mail that's delivered to your apartment? I'm pretty sure everyone knows I live here now." Troy gestured around the huge house he'd bought at the request of his parents before pulling the shirt over his head.

"Yeah, well, this person didn't. Will you please hurry up? I'm dying to know what's in this package and I don't really want to find out in your room." Chad said waving the bulky package in front of Troy's face as Troy rose from the bed.

"Sure. Why do you want to know what's in the package?" Lifting his arms above his head, Troy stretched his back out as Chad moved from one foot to another impatiently.

"Because it was delivered to my door and because I saw the sending address and I want to see you're reaction." With that taunt, Troy watched as his best friend of twenty years spun on his heel and left his bedroom and wondered why the sending address was so important.

With a sigh, Troy followed Chad slowly. As he wandered slowly out of his bedroom, bare except for an expensive looking bed and a night table, Troy wondered if he should maybe think about calling his parents. They had, after all, been the one who had told him to buy this house so he could accommodate themselves and his brother's family. Not that they had come to visit since he'd bought the house and moved in. He supposed that had something to do with the fact that he'd only gotten around to unpacking his bedroom, the kitchen and part of his living room. But then, he hadn't been here that long and between training and tournaments unpacking had been bumped to the bottom of his to-do list.

As he began to walk down the stairs, Troy gazed at the faded green walls and wondered how long it would take him to paint the house by himself. As he walked, he figured that it would probably be more than he could handle and knew that if he didn't paint the house before his mother arrived, he wouldn't only be hearing about the unpacking but the color of the walls as well.

As he walked into the kitchen, Troy snorted when he found that Chad was already busying himself with whatever he could find in the fridge. Knowing that it would take Chad a while before he found something that could satisfy his friends huge appetite, Troy dropped into a chair at the kitchen table and watched as his best friend made a strange grunting sound, his head still in the refrigerator.

Tall, good looking and funny, Chad Danforth had been his best friend since he was eight when they had bonded over their eight year old aspirations to become rich and famous by becoming famous sportsmen. At the time both had wanted to play basketball, become LA Lakers legends and then live in a huge house, playing the latest play station games and eating whatever they wanted. As they grew older and girls became part of their world, they'd worked girls into their plan of becoming basketball stars.

Their plan and friendship had hit a bump when Troy, who as he had gotten older had become more and more involved in tennis, had decided to pursue tennis, quitting the basketball team and gaining attention as he worked his way to a junior national tennis tournament when he was barely eleven. Chad hadn't been impressed with the decision but, after Troy had said that tennis players earned heaps, had simply decided that it might be cool if one was a basketball star and another was a tennis star. That way neither of them had to worry about losing the spotlight to each other.

They'd recovered and despite their success in their chosen professions, neither had lost contact with each other and the two men had the ability to pick up where they left off even if they hadn't seen each other for over six months.

Hearing something slam down onto his scarred table, Troy jumped. "Dude, are you going to open the damn package or not?" Chad asked as Troy stared at the day old pizza that Chad had found in his fridge. He wasn't quite sure when he'd eaten that pizza or if he'd even ordered it but assumed that if he hadn't, then Chad had.

"Chad, how did you get in?" Purposefully ignoring the fact that the package was sitting in front of him, Troy decided to inquire as to how Chad had managed to get in his new house when he hadn't seen him in the last month and couldn't give him his new key.

"Um…luck?" Chad replied, lifting a piece of cold pizza. Troy sent him a look. "The window to your living room was partially open. I climbed through." Troy tilted his head back and closed his eyes. Of course, which meant that whatever had piqued his interest in the package was enough to have the burly basketball player to climb through a window.

"Christ Chad, you couldn't have gone to get coffee and then waited until I was awake?" Troy asked and Chad shrugged as he shoved the slice of pizza into his mouth. "You're disgusting dude." Chad rolled his eyes as he swallowed.

"Troy, seriously, you need to get your shit together. You don't even have a coffee pot and we all know that's your vice." Chad took another bite of pizza and swallowed. "Besides, your living rooms got boxes lined up against the wall. You need to get all of that shit out of them before they collapse." Troy groaned.

"Shut up, Chad. You sound like mom and she hasn't even seen the damn house yet. Besides I haven't even got around to it." Troy didn't bother to add that he had only been in and out of this new house since he'd bought it.

"Dude, you've been on break for what? A week and you haven't gotten around to it?" Chad sounded incredulous and Troy shrugged.

"Uh. No. Obviously. Can I point out that I've unpacked the living room, my bedroom and the kitchen? I thought I was doing well." Troy said, glancing at the package sitting on the table and, now that his brain was beginning to function properly, found that he was curious about it.

"Yeah. In parts." Chad snorted and Troy sighed. "Dude, open the package. I want to know what's in it and I know that you do too. Now that you're awake." Chad added as an afterthought and Troy grinned slightly.

"You are pretty desperate, aren't you?" He asked and Chad nodded. "Fine." Troy reached over and grabbed the parcel.

Grinning slightly as he watched Chad slow his chews down in concentration. Troy tore open the package; not bothering looking at the sending address in case he found that it was from someone he didn't want to answer. He paused when he found a small, plain, elongated wooden box. Glancing up at Chad who had stopped chewing, Troy knew a frown marred his features.

"What is it?" Chad asked curiously and Troy pulled out the small shoebox, hearing a shifting noise that sounded suspiciously like paper. Placing it back on the table, Troy tipped up the package and an envelope fell out.

For a moment, all Troy did was stare at the wooden box and the envelope that had his name written on it in hasty writing.

"And the plot thickens." Chad's teasing whisper made Troy snort with laughter as he relaxed slightly, having a feeling that the wooden box and letter was a prank being pulled by his brother. A payback for all those years Troy had pulled a prank on Andrew without room for retaliation.

"Oh yes, the plot thickens." Troy agreed in a stage whisper. Chad grinned. "It's all a mystery as he reaches across and grabs the envelope, lifting it and examining it closely." As he spoke, Troy picked up the envelope, glanced at his name before flipping it over to open it. Chad picked up the running commentary where Troy had left off, both conveniently forgetting the fact that they were grown men in favor of acting like they were eight years old again and looking for the evil men in the bathroom.

"He opens the envelope, a nice clean tear. He peeks in, makes sure there's no white powder or evil device that will eat his brain out instantly," Chad's voice was low as Troy pulled out the single sheet of paper in the envelope. "He unfolds it slowly, it's nice paper and has been carefully folded, anticipation mounts as he what he expects to be in the letter…dude? Are you all right?" The change in Chad's tone didn't make Troy glance up from the piece of paper, nor did it make him move.

Instead, Troy stared at the words on the paper. Reading them over again frantically, forcing himself to control his breathing as he read it once again. The letter was a note, short and to the point. It explained the box and the reason for writing to him clearly and held a hint of exasperation at the sender's efforts. Slowly, Troy placed the paper on the table and turned his attention to the wooden box in front of him.

He stared at it even as Chad picked up the sheet of paper and read over it. Troy continued to stare at the plain, slightly worn box as Chad reread the letter before he glanced up at his friend.

"Dude, is that –" Troy cut him off with a curt nod.

"Uh-huh."

"And you haven't seen her in –"

"Yep."

"Why is –"

"Don't know."

Chad carefully placed the letter down on the bench and turned his own gaze to the wooden box sitting on the kitchen bench. He supposed that it looked worn out, like it had been in use for some time. Though he'd seen the senders address on the back of the package, he hadn't expected it to be something like this nor had he expected Troy to react like this.

"Are you going to –" Again, Troy cut him off with a sharp shrug.

"I don't know." He replied curtly and Chad wondered if the curtness was coming from shock or from something that ran much deeper.

"What if she –" this time it wasn't Troy's nod that cut him off, it was his eyes. They cut sharply from the box to him and Chad snapped his mouth shut at the flat, blank look of Troy's eyes.

"Don't know if she did. Don't care if she did either." The words were harsh and Chad opened his mouth to protest when Troy shook his head. "No, Chad. I may have fucked up, but she's the one that left me." With that, Troy pushed away from the table and headed out of the kitchen. Leaving his friend and the plain wooden box sitting forlornly at the scarred kitchen table without a backward glance.

Sighing, Chad glanced back down at the letter, reading it over once again.

_Dear_ _Troy,_

_I have no idea if you remember me. I don't really care if you do or you don't. But I know you remember my best friend, Gabriella Montez and that's why I'm writing._

_She's moving and I found the shoebox that's hopefully sitting in front of you right now. In the shoebox is letters, nine in total, all addressed to you. I read only one. Some random one that I'm pretty sure she doesn't remember writing but all these letters are important. To her and to you. You need to read these Troy, before being apart kills you two. _

_I know you're probably mad at her and most likely depressed but you've got to read these letters, Troy. They're important. They're in chronological order so start at the beginning (of the pile, but you're an intelligent guy, you probably already knew that) and, well; I hope you see something that everyone seems to see but you two._

_I hope these find you because I couldn't find your address and the closest thing I had was that of your friend Chad._

_Please read those letters, she won't ever say it but she loves you more than you know._

_Sincerely,_

_Sharpay Evans_

As he finished the note again, Chad hissed out a breath and got up. He wasn't sure what he was going to say to his friend but he knew that he'd better say something in case Troy did something stupid.

Hearing a thump come from upstairs, Chad followed it cautiously. There had been more hurt in Troy's eyes than anger and he knew that Troy was more likely to react to the hurt than the anger. Stepping into Troy's bedroom, Chad chose to ignore the blood on the wall and concentrated on the way his friend was hunched over the window.

"Dude? You okay?" Troy heard Chad's voice and kept his eyes squeezed shut for a second longer. His hand throbbed from where he'd punched the wall and Troy ignored it as he drew in one deep breath before turning to face his friend.

"Fine." He replied tersely and chose to ignore Chad's raised eyebrows. "I've got to go for a run." Even though he said it, Troy made no move to pull on his clothes.

"Are you going to read the letters?" Chad asked and Troy sighed.

He wanted to say no. To completely eliminate any sort of curiosity and need to touch something that had come from her. But he couldn't do that because he knew that once he managed to control the hurt and anger, he'd pick up one letter and read through it. Just to see what she had to say.

"I haven't decided yet." He replied finally and Chad raised an eyebrow that told him his friend didn't believe him. Troy shrugged his shoulders and then sighed, looking out the window. "I don't know Chad because I don't know if I want to know what she has to say." Chad's face stayed still at that, but Troy could tell that Chad didn't believe him.

Chad nodded slowly before speaking. "Alright. Can I read one then?"

"No!" The word burst from Troy's mouth before Chad had gotten the question out of his mouth and Chad nodded again, this time with a shadow of a grin.

"Alrighty then. Just checking to see if you'd care."

Damn it walked right into that one, Troy thought sourly as Chad grinned at him complacently.

"Shut up Danforth." Troy hissed. "You can't read the letters because I'm not reading the letters." The way Chad raised an eyebrow at Troy's words had him understanding how juvenile he sounded when he'd spoken.

"I didn't say anything about you reading them, did I?" Chad asked calmly and Troy scowled at him. "But seeing as you're not going to read them, I'm going to leave them sitting on the kitchen table, lid off, just waiting for you to come over and stare at them before deciding to read one, just one, and then going on to read the others because you just can't help yourself." Chad smirked, pleased with himself, when Troy aimed a dirty look over his shoulder.

"No. I will not do that. Leave them on the kitchen bench for all I care. I'm going for a run." Troy snapped out the words before stalking over to his closet and slamming the door of the walk-in behind him.

Chad stared after his friend for a moment and then, shaking his head in part amusement, part sympathy, left the bedroom. Though he doubted Troy realized now, he knew that Troy was going to read those letters partly because he was curious and partly because she'd written them.

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He wasn't going to read those damn letters. He wasn't even going to pick up one and stare at the envelope. There was absolutely no way that Chad's goading and the lure of what she had to say was going to make him pick up one of them and scan, just scan, through it.

So those stupid letters could stop sitting there looking desperate for him to read them.

Troy slammed his beer, an indulgence on a good day and desperately needed today, down on the kitchen table and scowled at the box of letters sitting in front of him. He'd avoided the kitchen after Chad had left. He'd gone for a run, had a shower and then tried to distract himself with the play station before trying to unpack some of the boxes.

He'd given up midway through the afternoon and had stared at the ceiling until he had decided to give into his craving for a beer.

Now there they were, sitting tauntingly in front of him, forcing him to relive every single moment of the relationship that had been ended for good the minute she'd let her insecurities take a hold of her after their final argument. He didn't want to open them; he didn't want to know what she had written, if they were written over time or if they were written all at once.

"Screw it." He muttered under his breath. It couldn't hurt to read one. Just one. To see what one of the letters were about. To see what was written on the pages.

Setting his beer down on the scarred table, Troy reached over hesitantly and pulled the box over to him.

Remembering what Sharpay had said about starting at the top, Troy flipped open the lid. Staring down at the first envelope, he cautiously reached down and slid it out from under the string that tied the bundle together and pulled it out of the box.

For a moment he only stared at the white envelope with his name written on the front in her neat handwriting.

Taking a deep breath, he flipped it over and slid his finger under the flap. Pulling it open, he pulled out two lined sheets and unfolded them. Picking up his beer, Troy took one large gulp before setting it back down and beginning to read the letter.

_Dear Troy…_

_

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_A/N: This is just a heads up about this story. It's actually prewritten. I've got four chapters already written and for every chapter I post, there will be a new one written so I don't fall behind in this story. So I hope you enjoyed the first chapter of this and I promise it won't be put on hiatus!


	2. Chapter 2: Think Happiness

Disclaimer: I do not own 'High School Musical' or any related characters nor do I own Taylor Swift's lyrics.

A/N: Okay, new chapter's up. I'm going to try and update every Friday, hopefully, if not every second Friday. As I said, this story is actually pre-written and that's why I can update so quickly. Good news too, my HSC is over and done with so I'm going to try and get a new chapter of Memories up because I've discovered that I've really missed writing the story.

Anyway, enjoy this new chapter and the first letter!

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_**The Letters Never Read**_

_**Chapter **__**Two: Think Happiness**_

_When you think happiness  
I hope you think that little black dress  
Think of my head on your chest  
And my old faded blue jeans  
_

Tim McGraw – Taylor Swift

_Dear Troy, _

_ Do you realize that you're leaving tomorrow? I know that you've spent time talking to your dad and your mom and your brother about the fact that you're heading off to play all over America tomorrow. Hoping for that one break than will show just what you can do on the tennis court. But that's not what I mean. I know you realize that you're going to be playing against some of the best players in the world as they warm up for the US Open and that you're excited, I understand that, but that wasn't what I was asking._

_ Do you realize that you're leaving me tomorrow?_

_ I know that's probably not what you expected from this letter, which is why I'm going to wait to give it to you. But I don't think either of us is ready for tomorrow. I don't think it's sunk in yet, for you or me, that leaving our holiday place, Sturgeon Bay, means we're leaving behind everything that's happened this summer. That we're leaving each other behind tomorrow._

_ I know when I bring this up, when I point out to you that we're not going to survive after we leave this cocoon of safety that you're going to argue with me. That we're probably going to have our biggest argument yet and while I know it's coming, I don't want our summer ruined by a fight about whether we can survive what's coming. I don't want your last memory of this place to leave a bitter taste in your mouth as you get on that plane tomorrow and head for Washington. _

_I want you to remember what came before tonight. What happened when we first met, do you remember? You barely glanced over me before you announced you were tired and headed off to bed. I thought you were just palming us all off. My parents, I remember, were less than impressed with you. Even after you're parents had made an excuse about you're training lasting longer than anticipated and that you really were tired. I figured that you weren't ever going to be interested in me after that first meeting. But you proved me wrong, so wrong. _

_I don't quite understand how you managed to do it Troy, I think it was the first time you and I ever had a serious conversation that I knew this was something different. I wasn't so shy around you and I'm always so comfortable. But even the shyness and comfort was eclipsed by what you made me feel. Butterflies, sparks, a rush of teenage hormones. All those made you so very different and then, somehow, I found that those feelings had combined into that all encompassing feeling of love. I was in love with you and, to my surprise; I found that you were in love with me too. _

_That's what I want you take away from this perfect summer, Troy. I want you to take away the fact that for three perfect months we were together and in love. I don't know if it was the real love that everyone talks about or wishes for, but what I know is that these three months were so real for me. That you were the most imperfect perfect person for me this summer and that I know that what we take away from this summer is so much more than a summer filled with memories. It will be a summer filled with feelings. Love, happiness, contentedness. _

_I want you to remember the happiness, especially that night when you took me out. When I wore that little black dress that I swore I'd never wear when you'd found it in my suitcase and we sat by the shoreline of Sturgeon Bay and looked up at the stars with water lapping at the shoreline gently. It was just you and me, with the full moon lighting us as you kissed me on that shoreline, with the water making the soothing sound as it lapped against the shore. You were happy and I was happy and I know you'll never forget that either._

_I want you to take that with you when you leave me tomorrow. I want you to take those other memories as well, remember the first time I saw you without a shirt? I don't think I've ever been that red before or that time when we were swimming and were caught by our parents in a position that made my dad become so stoically silent it took him days to look at our faces again? Then there was the time you first made love to me, at our spot by the Bay, and afterwards you held me against you and all I could think was 'I could stay here for the rest of my life, just as long as he always holds me like this.'_

_I know that tomorrows going to be hard, Troy. It's going to be hard for both of us. I know that it hasn't sunk in that you're leaving me or that I'm leaving you. I know that we're probably going to fight tonight and that I'm going to cry because I don't want to let you go and that you, being so imperfectly perfect, are going to feel awkward and try and make it better by promising to call me every day and as much as I love you for promising me that, I don't want it either. _

_I want you to promise me tonight that you'll never forget me. I want you to promise me that you'll always remember our summer by the Bay, where we teased your brother about nearly crying when your dad confiscated his phone and you held me by the shoreline. I want you to promise me that when you think happiness, you think of that date by the Bay and that little black dress. But most of all, I want you to promise me you're never going to forget how we feel and that no matter how far you go in the world you're about to enter, you're always going to remember that, once upon a time, you loved a girl named Gabriella in the summer before your big break._

_People forget what you say, Troy, and people forget what you do, but people never forget how you made them feel. I love you Troy, you made me feel that and I'm never going to forget it. I hope that you never forget that I made you feel love too; I hope that no matter what you forget, you never forget we loved each other._

_I love you._

_Gabriella_

_

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__Sturgeon Bay – July 2000 _

Nineteen year old Troy Bolton knocked on his girlfriend's door and tried not to curse when he heard a muffled 'coming'. She'd kicked him out of her room earlier, claiming that she had to get ready and he wasn't allowed to watch. If it had been any other night but the night before he left, he would have complained good naturedly before coming to get her when he figured she was finished.

Except tonight was the night before he left for Washington and he knew, though he didn't want to admit it out loud, the last night he had with her. Though he didn't want to think about the fact that it was the last night he was going to spend with her for a very long time, Troy couldn't help but let his head fall against the door he was standing in front of and wished that he'd stuck to his own rule of not getting involved with anyone until he was sure of what he could do on the court.

From an early age, Troy had known that tennis was the sport for him. He'd played both basketball and tennis and in both sports he'd shown an innate talent. With basketball it had been a commanding presence that demanded the best from the team he was captain of. Tennis had been different, there had been a rhythm to his playing, a single-minded intensity that took raw talent and turned into a refined art that hinted at an ability to take him from the junior league into the big time. It was that drive, to make a name for himself in the sport he'd discovered her loved, which had made him give up basketball and turn all his efforts to tennis. It was that drive that made people look and know that he was going to make it.

But it was also that drive that was taking him away from Gabriella. God, why did it have to be her? Troy thought sourly as he stepped away from the door before someone came upstairs and found him showing something close to weakness. Why did it have to be her? This wasn't some clichéd romance where he would stop at the airport and run back to promise her that she would always be in his heart, he couldn't do that and he wouldn't do that. Even though he knew tomorrow was going to be like ripping something out of his chest, throwing it on the ground and stomping on it just to make sure it hurt a lot more than it should.

He knew that he shouldn't have gotten close to her. He'd agreed to this summer holiday because both his parents and his coach had agreed that him making the semi-finals of the last tournament he played and holding his own until the fifth set, where he dropped two games and was unable to recover the games due to the strain of playing one of the top seeded players in the world and the match entering its fifth hour proved that Troy was on his way to reaching the top, sooner, he knew, than most people had planned.

Now, though he didn't want to admit it, Gabriella was screwing with his head because, somehow, in the most irritatingly clichéd way ever, she'd gotten under his skin and had lodged tightly somewhere in the vicinity of his heart.

Troy detested clichés and he detested words that should never have been said but most of all, he absolutely detested the fact that those words, the ones he'd shared with her by the shoreline of the Bay, meant so much more than he thought they ever would. He just couldn't figure out if it was the words that mattered or if it was the girl he'd said them too that was screwing with his mind.

Either way, he knew he wanted to make the most of this last night with her even though he highly doubted it was going to be an easy night.

"Hey, how long have you been waiting?" Though he wanted to jerk at her voice, Troy forced himself not too as he glanced up from where he'd been staring at the floor and met her curious gaze.

"Not sure. Can't have been that long though." He shrugged it off as he allowed his lips to flick up slightly at the white summer dress she was wearing, the thick straps and square neckline flattering her. "You look good." He held his hand out and Gabriella took a step forward and took it.

"Thank you. You don't look bad yourself." Troy pulled her closer, sliding his arms around her waist tightly. Despite her teasing tone, he saw the sadness in her eyes and wanted to take it away.

Burying his nose in her hair, Troy breathed in her scent, smiling slightly at the vanilla and cinnamon scent that was so intoxicating. He kissed her hair gently as she sighed, snuggling deep into the crook of his neck.

"What am I going to do without you?" She whispered the words as her arms tightened tightly around him and Troy drew in a deep breath at her words. "You don't have to answer that. I'm being stupid." Of course she heard him and of course she backtracked, Troy thought sourly. She always did when she said something she didn't think he would want to here.

"Gabriella, don't apologize, you know it annoys me." This time Troy was the one that heard the quick intake of breath and he regretted his harsh tone more than his words.

"I don't want to fight tonight Troy. Please, just ignore what I said." There was something quietly desperate about her tone that had him pausing. Looking down, Troy caught a glimmer of tears and swore quietly under his breath.

He didn't want to fight and he didn't want her to cry either. But fighting with her, the night before he left, might make it hurt less and he needed to do _something_.

"Gabriella, I don't want to fight either but seriously, we need to talk about it." Frustration edged his tone even as he gently shifted her away from him. She looked up and both heard the music from the downstairs party their parents were throwing drift up to them.

"No, we don't." Gabriella shook her head in denial and Troy sighed in frustration. "Troy, seriously, we don't need to talk about. You're leaving tomorrow and that's that. Please, don't make it harder than it already is." This time he swore a little more loudly than he intended and had her eyes widening slightly.

"So, that's it. That's how we're going to leave this, without a fight?" He asked, furious and incredulous and she shrugged. "Can we fight tomorrow? Before you leave? Before we meet in ten years time and pretend that we don't remember anything about this summer?" Troy felt irritation twinge at her assumption that they weren't going to remember this summer before he realized she was right. They shouldn't fight, not tonight, when he wanted to spend the night saying goodbye without the words.

Breathing slowly, Troy dropped his forehead to hers and closed his eyes. His hand moved from her hip, sliding up to the back of her neck where he let it rest under the curtain of her dark curls.

"Come, on let's go downstairs." Though it was the last thing he wanted to do, Troy knew that if they didn't, they'd stay in her room and he knew that they would fight before the morning came and because she didn't want to fight, Troy took her hand and led her downstairs.

As they reached the bottom of the stairs, Troy turned abruptly, facing her as she paused on the bottom step, looking at him curiously.

Before she could ask what was wrong, Troy kissed her. The easy familiar way her lips responded; the simple sigh as she parted her lips and slid her arms around his neck made him ache. His hand fisted on the small of her back and he drew away.

"You're beautiful, so beautiful." Troy murmured and Gabriella blushed. "I'm going to miss you, Gabriella. I'm going to miss you and I don't know what to do about it." He said it quietly as she held him tightly.

"I'll miss you too." For her, Troy thought as she whispered it, it was so simple. She'd miss him and then they'd go their separate ways tomorrow and that would be it.

Their relationship wouldn't survive what would be demanded of him in the next few months and it wouldn't survive the distance. He knew, too, that she wouldn't survive him when he went back to tennis. She wouldn't be able to handle his total concentration on the sport; she wouldn't be able to handle her coming in second best every time and he doubted she'd be able to handle a relationship that someone much older than her would struggle with.

So why, if he knew all of that, if he knew that tomorrow this was coming to an end and that in ten years it was doubtful he was going to remember a girl he spent his summer with, did he know too that her and this love was going to haunt him for a long time to come?

* * *

_San Francisco, __California – 2009_

Blowing out a breath, Troy threw the damn letter away from him. He remembered that last night too clearly to deny the fact that the love they had for each other hadn't ended up haunting them.

It had. It had haunted them for nearly a decade and damned if he hadn't wanted to throw it away when he was nineteen and never think of it again. It was just his hard luck that she had stayed in his mind for nine years, his hard luck that their lives had become intertwined over and over again as they moved forward into the people they were today. It was just his hard luck that she had upped and left him just as he'd finally thought they'd come to the end of their saga.

It was his hard luck that this box of letters sat in front of him, telling him her side when all he wanted to do was forget.

Feeling restless, Troy shoved the letter away from him and stood. He snatched up his beer and drained it, fighting the wave of unhappiness which washed over him. Setting the empty bottle down, Troy moved to the refrigerator and pulled out another one. Opening it, he shut the fridge door and took a sip before he squeezed his eyes shut and leaned his forehead against the cool stainless steel.

Six months and no word, he thought sourly. Six months and suddenly I get a box of letters she wrote to me over the years, letters that she wasn't brave enough to send me but her best friend was. Because Troy didn't want it to hurt, he pushed away the all consuming choking feeling which he'd been fighting ever since he'd come home and she'd been gone. Instead, he concentrated on the letter she'd written when she was seventeen.

She was right. They had spent three perfect months together. Three months where they were happy, indulgent teenagers enjoying the kind of uncomplicated love you were supposed to look back on and laugh about. Three months where she'd grown from a girl to someone on the brink of womanhood and he'd seen another option than the all consuming sport which ruled his life.

He wasn't going to deny he'd thought about that summer. He had. Especially after the US Open when he'd been thrown from obscurity into the spotlight due to his thrashing of one of the top seeded players in the world. He'd wished, between the games and the stress, to go back to the shoreline of Sturgeon Bay and look at the stars with Gabriella curled up beside him.

But that was all it had been. Wishing. Wishing for the time when being happy was uncomplicated and laughing wasn't hard. She'd made him happy, Troy remembered, she'd made him laugh and damn her for wanting him to remember that.

Swinging around again, Troy glared at the box again in disgust. There were more letters, more memories just waiting to be dredged up again. The more there were, the less Troy knew what to do.

He'd read one letter. Wasn't that enough? Did he need to read the rest and find out what her eighteen year old self had thought? What her twenty year old self thought? There was no doubt there was one of those, Troy thought with a smirk. Even he remembered what had happened when she was twenty.

Did he want to remember the years between then and now, reading as her feelings changed and she became the person she was today?

Even as his head told him to go to bed, to shut off for more than a couple of hours, Troy was taking another swig of his beer and sitting back down in the chair he'd left only minutes ago. He knew it was bad idea to read another one. He was well aware that it would probably do more harm than good in the long run but Troy couldn't help it.

Because if these letters were the only things he had left of her than he needed to know if the answer to her leaving was in them somewhere. He needed to have something of her left. Something he could take out and read once in a while even as he wondered.

"Christ Troy, want to get any more sentimental?" He muttered scathingly to himself. Taking another sip of beer, Troy slid the first letter back into its faded envelope and then carefully placed it face down on the table.

Reaching for the next one, Troy took it out. He noted that it was as old as the first one and the edge of the envelope had been worried a bit, like someone had bent and unbent it while thinking. Smiling slightly as he imagined her doing that, Troy opened the envelope and pulled out another two pages of writing. Taking a deep breath, he unfolded the pages and began to read.

_Dear Troy…_

_

* * *

_

A/N: So...how was that? I hope you all enjoyed it and I hope it's a little different to what you expected. I'm going to try and follow the ATP World Tour tennis calendar as closely as possible because the element of Troy playing professional tennis in this story is really important. Anyway, I hope you all enjoyed it!


	3. Chapter 3: Summer Fling

Disclaimer: I do not own 'High School Musical' or any related characters nor do I own Taylor Swift's lyrics.

A/N: Okay, so maybe the update every Friday things going to kinda fail. Not sure but we can safely assume that I suck at updating. Man, I figured since school was over I'd be okay to write, boy was I wrong. Who knew that my dad thought me finishing school meant that I became his personal gofer? I didn't. Anyway, new chapter, kind of sad considering I re-read the letter and it's both a depressing song and how she feels is upsetting.

So, enjoy the new chapter!

* * *

_**The Letter Never Read**_

_**Chapter Three: Summer Fling**_

_He's the reason for the teardrops on my guitar  
The only one who's got enough of me to break my heart  
He's the song in the car I keep singing, don't know why I do  
He's the time taken up, but there's never enough  
And he's all that I need to fall into_

Teardrops on My Guitar – Taylor Swift_  
_

_ Dear Troy,_

_ I didn't know that it was going to be so hard. I didn't realize that I was going to back, a senior at East High and looking for something, anything, to distract myself from memories of you. _

_ Is it this hard for you? Do you sometimes lay awake at night wishing that you had the courage to call? I do. I can't help myself. Sometimes I get your number up on screen and I stare at it for hours. I can never seem to press that tiny green button though. It's beginning to haunt me and I know I'm going crazy when I yelled at one of my friends, Sharpay, for threatening to delete your number. But I can't help it. I want to know how you are, if you're really as okay as you appear when you give those post match interviews. Sometimes, I think you're not. Sometimes I think you look a little too tired or that the strain of playing at the level you are is getting to you. Then I shake my head and remind myself that I'm obsessing over something that I probably won't ever know._

_ Do you want to know what I think the hardest part is? Seeing something or hearing something that reminds me of you. There are those times I'll be driving around, heading to school or simply needing to be alone and a song will come on the radio and I'll start singing along, mumbling the chorus when I don't know the words. Most of the time, those songs are of lost loves and how the singer wished that they could be with them again. I don't know if I want to be with you again, Troy, I'm starting to think that hearing from you would be enough. Just to see if you're doing well. _

_ I've taken up guitar, as well. A friend of mine, Ryan, got me into it when he found me sitting at home and moping one Saturday. It's fun. Sometimes Ryan'll try and teach me something and I'll have no idea what he's doing and he'll declare me hopeless. But the Saturday after, we'll be back in my living room again. I'm not sure I'll ever be very good at playing but when it just me and my guitar, in my room in the middle of the night and I think of you, it's all I need to let the tears come. It's easy to cry when there's no-one there to tell you that it was a summer fling. _

_ I realized something today Troy. I never gave you that letter the night before you left. I never did because I always told myself that there was never a right time to give it to you. We spent that last night together in the most perfect way possible and, despite my tears and your insistence that you'd call, I couldn't bring myself to hand over something that meant more than I ever thought it would. You, Troy Bolton, have so much of my heart that that last letter was the last part of me to give over to you. There was so much in that letter that I only just realized that to give it to you would be to give you even more license to break my heart._

_ I won't say you broke my heart, though. Because I doubt you did. During that summer, Troy, I think I grew. When I came back to Albuquerque, I found myself shaking my head slightly as some of my friends giggled over the basketball team or that my advice to Sharpay when she and her boyfriend, Zeke broke up was so much more mature than I'd ever thought it could be. It was like being with you had opened up some part of me I never knew existed and that while I still hurt, while I hear my mom talking to your mom over the phone and wonder if your telling your mom things you might have once told me, it makes looking at the larger picture easier, less like the scary world and more like something I can handle. It's making college seem a lot easier too._

_ I know we discussed college. Sometimes, we'd get into those long conversations about how you thought it would be better if I attended a school that I __wanted__ to attend instead of attending a school dad wants me too, remember those? Well, I took your advice Troy. Much to dad's chagrin. I'm going to Stanford still; I don't think I can see myself anywhere else. Not after we visited the campus and I fell in love with San Francisco. But I'm not going to study law. It's not what I wanted in the first place; I can't see myself as a lawyer. Not with the yelling and those deals where you find yourself examining your own moral and ethical choices. I'm going to study history. Whatever sort of history I can get my hands on and philosophy and an ancient language. Just because. I'm hoping that in doing that, I'll really find my niche. _

_ Do you remember that time when your brother surprised me by knowing what I was talking about? We were all sitting outside that holiday house my parents had rented and I had mentioned a man named Themistocles to you. You had no idea what I was talking about but Andrew did. He was all for arguing that the Themistocles decree was actually a brilliant insight into the mind of one of the great leaders of the Greco-Persian wars. I don't remember his arguments, exactly, I just remember you laughing hysterically and kissing me soundly after I'd told your brother the decree was actually proved to have been written two hundred odd years after the end of the wars. _

_ What you said afterwards about how you loved watching me talk about something I was so passionate about is one of the best memories I have of you._

_ I don't really know why I'm writing this to you now, Troy. I'm not even sure I'm going to send it, even if I do find out where you are. I don't know why you're still so firmly in my mind and my heart or that every time a song comes on I sing it, thinking of you. I don't know why I only cry about how much not having you near hurts in the middle of the night, with my teardrops falling onto my guitar. I still don't really understand why I never gave you that letter that night, even though I know that it was one more thing you could take that could break me. I miss you Troy, more, I think, than I thought I ever would. Sometimes, late at night like right now, I think that if you were to walk through my door right now, I would let you back into my life without any hesitation and I don't know what that means._

_ If loving you, Troy, is letting you go then I don't know if I ever loved you at all. Because letting you go is becoming so much more painful than I anticipated. But if letting you go means letting go of loving you then maybe I do love you. Maybe the hurt means more than not loving but loving you on a level I don't understand. If that's the case, I hope I get a chance to understand, one day._

_ I miss you Troy, every day. _

_I love you._

_ Gabriella_

_

* * *

__Barcelona, Spain__ – April 2001 _

Troy was wired. He'd forgotten what happened to his body when he'd pushed himself beyond his limit. He'd forgotten that adjusting to a different altitude, a different country and a different surface could all lead to an exhaustion that hit the bone but wouldn't allow for sleep.

He knew that he should be sleeping. It wasn't as if he was stupid but sleeping was hard after a marathon match where he'd beaten the top seed. Especially when he knew that that momentum was going to carry him through the final to a win which would only add to his rapidly growing accolades.

Shaking his head, Troy stripped off his shirt and threw it down on the spare bed in his room. He'd refused to room with his father or his coach this time round, needing the privacy more than he'd realized. Though neither man understood Troy's refusal to room with them, they had eventually conceded when he'd gotten angry.

Now that he had the privacy of the lush hotel room did Troy realize the reason he wanted a room to himself was so he could stand on the balcony and think of her.

He'd stopped thinking about her name, he'd found that the quick stab of pain whenever he thought it was irritatingly bittersweet and he couldn't handle it. Even as he frowned, Troy was throwing open the French doors which led to his balcony and stepping out into the stillness of the night.

Though Barcelona lay before him, Troy didn't focus on the city; instead he looked up into the darkness of the night sky and sighed. He knew she would have loved it here; she'd wanted to go to Spain the last time he spoke to her. The last time months ago. Oh God, did he really miss her that much?

Yes, Troy answered his own question even though he refused to believe that she integral to his life. If she was so integral to it, if he missed her that much, shouldn't he be on the phone to her every day? Shouldn't he be messaging her every second to see how she was, what she was doing, if she missed him too? Shouldn't he care that he hadn't spoken to her in months?

Because the thoughts irritated him and because he knew, deep down, that he was the only one stopping himself from calling her, Troy shoved his hand into his pocket and yanked out his phone. Flipping it open, Troy scrolled through his contacts, scowling even though he knew that she would probably answer.

Hitting call, Troy pressed the phone to his ear, hating himself for becoming irritated by his thoughts and fighting the nerves in his stomach. If she didn't answer than it would be proven they weren't integral to each others lives and therefore he shouldn't feel bad about not calling.

Even as the phone continued to ring against his ear, Troy began to hope that she would answer. He wondered if stopping himself from calling her every time he wanted too was stupid. He wondered if he'd let the hurt get in the way of having her in his life.

The sound of the mechanical answering machine snapped him out of his thoughts. Cursing, Troy snapped his phone shut and felt part of his triumph. He'd been proven right. They weren't integral to each others life.

God, was he an idiot? Just because she didn't answer didn't prove anything. It only proved that he'd probably called at the wrong time. That maybe she was without her phone for some reason or another. It didn't mean that they weren't integral to each others life.

Because the thought scared him more than he should and because he was making excuses, Troy pushed away that thought. He was nearly twenty for God's sake and he was worried about how integral a girl was to his life. He shouldn't be worried about something like that. His whole world should be focused on the fact that he was one win away from breaking the top five, one win away from proving to himself and to everyone else that he could do it. He could be one of the greats and he could do it with hard work, sweat and sacrifice.

Sacrifice. Troy winced at the word even as how much he had sacrificed taunted him slightly. She was just part of that world that he couldn't have. Not now at least. Just like the ever growing rift between him and his brother couldn't be healed now. His fist clenched at the thought, how much more was he going to have to sacrifice for a dream that was achievable to only a minority?

Don't go down that path Troy, he told himself firmly. He turned his mind away from it, knowing that if he questioned what he was doing now; his thoughts were going to go around in circles. Instead, his thoughts immediately returned to her.

She was one sacrifice he couldn't seem to push out of his mind. One sacrifice that he couldn't push from his mind when he wanted to. She was stuck there, immovable, and he wished to God that it had been what he'd told himself at the end. He wished that it really was just a summer fling. One that was harmless enough and left no scars that threatened to open whenever the subject turned to her.

Was it fair, Troy wondered, to feel something for her, to glimpse a life he'd always envied and then have it whisked away the minute they all realized he'd found the perfect time to make his mark?

If tennis hadn't been his life before the minute he'd agreed to go to Washington meant that it really was his life now. And who would settle for a life of constant upheaval without any real place to call home? She wouldn't and he wasn't stupid enough to want her too.

"Stop thinking about it, you idiot." Troy startled himself by scolding his thoughts out loud.

He needed to go to bed, rest. He had a match tomorrow. The biggest in his career so far. He needed to be rested for that and he needed to block out any other thought before than.

Even as he turned to step back into his room and crawl beneath the covers, he was flipping open his phone.

Surely it wouldn't matter if he tried once more. Just to prove that he could. That they weren't anything but a summer fling.

Pressing the phone to his ear, Troy leaned against the door frame and waited. Just when he was sure it was going to ring out again, it connected through.

"Hello?" Her voice immobilized him.

For a moment, Troy's mouth opened and closed rapidly, his mind jumbling words that he needed to spit out before she hung up.

"Hello?" She repeated and he blew out a breath, loudly. The minute he realized that he'd made a noise, his hand flew to his mouth and, like a child who'd said something naughty, clamped over it tightly.

"I know it's you, Troy." Her voice was quiet, a little unsure and Troy shut his eyes. "Can I say I miss you?" I miss you too, the thought was instantaneous and Troy's hand dropped from his mouth before rising to press its heel against his brow.

"Yes." The word came out before he could control himself and he heard her draw in a quick breath.

"Can I tell you that I -" he cut her off before she could finish the sentence.

"No. No. Don't." Harsh, Troy, he winced and he knew that it would have hurt her. "I don't think I -" this time she cut him off.

"I understand." He knew she didn't but couldn't bring himself to contradict her. Damn it, she wasn't meant to pick up!

"I miss you." She sounded wistful and Troy squeezed his eyes shut before yanking the phone away from his ear and snapping it shut.

It wasn't just a summer fling. It wasn't. Damn it, why couldn't it have just been a summer fling that left him grinning at stupid memories? Why did it have to be a summer fling where warm, happy memories of curling up by a bay were evoked simply by hearing the sound of her voice?

Her voice, he hadn't realized he'd needed to hear it so badly, hadn't realized that the soft, warm voice could be so reassuring. Because he knew that if he thought about it, he wouldn't sleep Troy clenched his fist and fought back the urge to punch something.

He brought the hand that was holding his phone to his brow and pressed hard. "I miss you too, Gabriella." He murmured it, wishing he could say it too her instead of whispering it into the Barcelona night.

It wasn't a stupid summer fling.

* * *

_San Francisco, California - 2009_

Troy felt someone poking him. He could feel the repetitive movement and had to assume that they'd been doing it for a while. The pain where that finger hit was excruciating. Like they'd been doing it for a while. Which, Troy thought at the next jab, they probably had. He'd collapsed onto the lounge after reading the previous letter and had tried to switch off.

Too bad his dreams had ended up being a moment relived.

Wrinkling his nose slightly at the memory of the dream, at the memory of remembering her, Troy tried not to wince when the finger jabbed him again. "Dude, I know you're awake." Of course it was Chad, Troy thought before Troy felt himself get thumped hard.

"Fuck, Chad! Dude, if you knew I was awake why'd you fucking hit me?" Troy jerked up as Chad grinned at him. The letter he'd been reading before he'd fallen asleep fluttered to the floor and Chad took one look at it and grinned.

"I knew you couldn't resist!" The triumphant note to Chad's voice had Troy bristling and shaking his head.

"It's not like that Chad. I just…don't read it!" Troy snatched the letter Chad had bent to pick up before he could really think about what he was doing. Chad smirked slightly at the reaction before nodding and watching as Troy neatly folded the pages again.

"Why not? Did she say something dirty? Oooh, are they letters she wrote when she was lonely while – "

"Chad!"

Chad's eye widened innocently. "What? I wouldn't be surprised if Little Miss Innocent had a naughty side."

"Chad you're talking about my ex-fiancé." The cold tone of Troy's voice had Chad's smirk slipping from his face and Chad sighing.

"Troy, I was joking." Chad attempted to placate his friend even as he took a step away from Troy, eyeing him as he realized that the temper that Troy had always carefully controlled was still as close to the surface as the day he had found out that she had left.

"Of course you were." Troy growled and Chad took another step back as Troy rose to his feet and ran a hand through his hair. "I've got to take a shower. I'm meeting Andrew for lunch." Chad eyed his friend before nodding.

He couldn't help but feel a twinge of disappointment when Troy stalked out of his living room with the letter clutched in his hand. He wanted to know what was in the letter that had his friend reacting the way he did. It was the first time since she'd left that Troy had reacted emotionally to something of hers and Chad was worried about what these letters were doing to his best friend.

Troy had refused to talk about his fiancés leaving with anyone once everyone had found out what had happened. Instead, he had upped his training and had, according to experts, played an uncontrollable game that secured his number one ranking but also annihilated every opponent he faced psychologically as well as physically.

Chad hadn't worried about Troy's physical game all too much when he'd watched his friend's first game after she had left. No, what had worried him was the psychological barrier he had put up during the game and had left up for the past six months. No-one could break Troy Bolton on the court and now, no-one could break Troy Bolton off the court. It was like he'd switched off totally since she'd walked out.

For Chad, Troy switching off was the scariest part about her leaving. Troy had always been fairly emotional though he wasn't good at expressing it and Chad had always taken it for granted that Troy would react emotionally to something that hurt him, especially when it came to a girl. Chad had, after all, experience dealing with Troy's reactions to break-ups. So when he had sat down for dinner with Troy the night after his first match, Chad had not been prepared for the blank emotional slate Troy was toting.

He wasn't the only one.

His parents, his brother and various friends had all expressed concern towards Troy and Troy had done what he had done to Chad when Chad had tried to bring up the subject. He had shrugged it off and told them he was fine.

Even thought it had been very clear that he wasn't fine.

Hearing the shower start, Chad glanced upstairs before deciding that it probably wasn't a good idea for him to still be there when Troy got out of the shower. Wondering if he should leave a note, Chad decided against it when he heard something slam.

Troy heard his front door slam shut as Chad made his exit and blew out a breath as he stared at himself in the mirror.

He knew Chad was worried about him, just as he knew that Andrew was going to be worried about him when Troy told his brother of the letters.

For a brief moment, Troy wondered if he should take one, just to prove to his brother that Gabriella hadn't been after his millions but decided against it. If Andrew knew about the letters then there was a good chance that his brother would tell his parents and there was an even better chance that his parents would tell Gabriella's and Troy was pretty sure that if they found out, it would all become a lot more complicated than it was before.

He knew that everyone was worried about him and he honestly wished that they wouldn't. He supposed telling them to not worry about him was asking a bit much, seeing as she had left him and he had simply pushed on with training and games and ignored the fact that he had stopped going back to the home they had somehow made in the craziness that was their life before she'd upped and left.

It hadn't been a normal response to something that was ultimately devastating, especially seeing as he didn't know why she had left. He had been told by his mother that he should have been tormented, demanding and emotional not collected, silent and blank.

For a moment, Troy honestly considered tormenting himself by continuing down that path but he knew he was only going to go around in a circle that led back to that same thing. He hadn't reacted because he didn't know why and he couldn't react to her leaving until he knew why. It was impossible for him to react to her leaving without her reason because it was easier to be angry with her reason instead of her leaving.

At that thought, Troy's mind turned to the letters and he wondered if her reason was in them. If at least any clue to her thought process before she had left was hidden in those letters. It had occurred to him, around a month after she had left, that she wouldn't have left on a split second decision, her reasoning would have been solid and built up on a number of years worth of insecurities and reasons. Their final argument would have just tipped the scales.

Narrowing his eyes at his reflection, Troy remembered the wording of Sharpay's letters. '_All these letters are important. To her and to you_', what if, Troy suddenly thought, they were important because they did have the reason as to why she left in them? It would save him hunting her down and losing his head in front of her. It would save him even talking to her again.

Frowning now, Troy hated that the thought made so much sense. Before he really thought about what he was doing, he headed out of the bathroom, flicking off the shower while he was heading out.

Taking the stairs quickly, Troy skidded into the kitchen and flipped open the box. He plucked out the next letter and wondered what it was going to say. Standing, Troy knew it wouldn't take him long to read through the third letter and opened the envelope and unfolded the letter quickly.

_Dear Troy…_

_

* * *

_A/N: Okay, so that was the next chapter. Hmm, I hope you liked it. Uh, the tournament Troy would be playing in while he's in Barcelona is the Barcelona Open Banco Sabadell. Oh, and in a response to a review in the last chapter and in case some of you were confused as to why Troy was going to Washington in the last letter when I mentioned the US Open. The tournament he was heading to was the Legg Mason Tennis Classic and a lead up the actual US Open in New York, it's also a tournament that can be used as qualification for the Open, if my informations correct and that's why Troy headed to Washington instead of New York. I'm going to try and follow the ATP Tour calendar as closely as possible for this story and I'll try and put the tournament name in either the story or in the authors note.

I hope you enjoy!


	4. Chapter 4: Love and Hate

Disclaimer: I do not own 'High School Musical' or any related characters nor do I own Taylor Swift's lyrics.

A/N: So, I was going to update this tomorrow but I'm wasn't too sure if I was going to be able too. It's my birthday tomorrow and my friend has a plan as to what I'm going to be doing for my birthday, kind of a scary thought if you must know. Anyway, so I thought I'd update today because of what's happening tomorrow which is when I really wanted to update. Also, for the time line of this story, their all roughly a year apart with both Troy and Gabriella older by a year in every letter. Unless I base him in Australia in January, which is when I figured Troy's birthday to be.

Okay, now that I've written all that, please enjoy this chapter.

* * *

_**The Letters Never Read**_

**Chapter Four: Love and Hate**

_If you're missing me  
You'd better keep it to yourself  
Cause coming back around here  
Would be bad for your health_

Picture to Burn – Taylor Swift

_ Dear Troy, _

_ I hate what you did to me. _

_I hate the fact that I'm writing you another letter that I'll never send. I hate the fact that my friends are sending me sympathetic looks. I hate the fact that you made me cry. I hate the fact that after three years of no contact, you can still make me feel something. I hate the fact that I'm so mad at you and I'm so delighted with you at the same time._

_But most of all, Troy, I hate the fact that you missed me and it took you three years to tell me. _

_If you missed me, why didn't you talk when you called? If you missed me, why couldn't you just go on keeping it to yourself? If you missed me __so much__ why did you get up before I woke up and just leave? Are you always going to do that? Come and find me, remind me of all the reasons why I pushed those complex feelings away and then just leave, embarrassing me in front of my friends and leaving me with no choice but to smile and keep my head high, is that what you're going to do?_

_I hate you for doing that. I hate you even more for making me so miserable that I feel like crawling under my covers and never coming out again._

_Do you realize it's a beautiful day here? I've just finished a class and am sitting at the café where we had breakfast that first morning after you showed up. Do you remember that? Were you already thinking of ways to get me into bed while we laughed about something stupid? Were you already thinking of ways of leaving me without a word of warning? You've ruined this day for me Troy, and this café._

_At least, last time, I had some warning. I had the memories of those summer days to cling too. Those times when we were only Troy and Gabriella. When you weren't Troy Bolton, one of the best tennis players in the world and I wasn't the college student who was nearly broke but so happy immersing herself in college life. Now, now do you know what I have? _

_I have a memory of giggling like a schoolgirl as I watched you. I have a memory of observing how different you were now that you'd managed to reach the big time. I have a memory of your kiss, steady and patient and oh so familiar. Then there's the time after the kiss. I have the memory of the heat, the passion with which you consumed me. I have a memory of you holding me afterwards, joking about round two before telling me how much you missed me. I have a memory of sitting on you lap as we watched the sun rise. I have a memory of waking up to find a note and nothing else. _

_I hate these memories Troy. I hate them so much because we were so different. I wasn't a nervous seventeen year old falling in love and you weren't a confident nineteen year old guiding me. I hate them so much because what I felt was different. I hate everything you did because everything you did was perfect._

_I don't want to cry over this, Troy. I don't want my friends to see my tears or tell them why you leaving the way you did hurt me so much. I don't want them to turn on the television and see you playing a match and think 'what a jerk. Leaving her in the middle of the night and only leaving a note.' _

_Because the thing I hate the most, the thing that I hate absolutely, the thing that's really killing me right now, as I write this, is not that you left, not that the note didn't hold so much that I keep it in a special box, what I hate so much is that I believed you when you said you didn't want to leave. I still do. _

_I don't know why I believe that. You left. You left a note that I now really do keep in a special box. You're somewhere in Australia right now, closing in on the top ranking and not thinking about the girl you left in the hotel room. Your mind is probably one hundred percent on the match before you. And I absolutely hate that._

_Why was it so hard for you to wait until I was awake? Why was it so hard for you to let me kiss you again and then watch you go? Why did you leave me asleep in your hotel room wearing your shirt and content knowing that you were supposed to be there when I woke up?_

_I hate that I don't have answers._

_You hurt me, Troy. You really did. Not only because you left. Not only because you left me with a shirt and a note that I know I'll always keep. Not only because I'm left trying to once again understand what you make me feel, making my feelings so much more complex than I thought they were ever going to be. Not only because I'm writing you another letter that I'll never send. But because you missed me._

_Because you missed me and you'd kept it to yourself for three years. Because you show up here, smile softly at me in greeting and watch as I fall straight back into your arms. Because you met my friends and now they want to know what happened. Why you left and I can't give them an answer and because I can't give them an answer, they're all pissed. They may not have looked like much when you met them but Troy, if you ever show up here again, they will all make sure you end up in hospital. I'm not joking, if you ever come back, it would be bad for your health and not just because maybe missing me is something you should keep to yourself._

_Love and hate are said to run hand in hand. Well, guess what Troy? I don't just hate what you did and how you did it. I don't just hate what you made me believe and how miserable I am. I don't just hate that you missed me and it took you three years to tell me. I hate you, Troy Bolton. I hate you so much that any sort of love I may have once felt has been consumed by that hate._

_I'm miserable without you, Troy Bolton. _

_I hate that I'm miserable without you, Troy Bolton._

_I hate you, Troy Bolton._

_Gabriella_

_

* * *

__San Francisco__, California – December 2002_

One night. That was all he'd had. One day and one night with her. He'd promised his coach and his father that he would only spend one day and night in San Francisco. He'd promised his coach that because he knew that he needed to get to Australia to adjust. Australia was notorious for its hot summer and Troy knew that he needed to play in that type of heat in order to perform to the best of his ability in the Australian Open.

He'd promised his father because Jack had wanted to remind him of all he'd worked for and how much he would regret it if he fell back into her.

He resented the time limit he'd had. He resented the fact that he'd made his promises because he could see the logic in them and not because he wanted too. He resented the fact that he was so comfortable with her curled in his arms and he could see the sunlight creeping through a crack in the curtains.

He resented the fact that he was going to leave before she awoke just so he could avoid looking into her disappointed eyes.

Maybe if he pretended it wasn't sunlight creeping through the window he'd get another hour. Another night, even. Maybe if he squeezed his eyes shut he could pretend to go back to sleep and miss the flight he knew was leaving in three hours.

Christ, maybe if he closed his eyes he could rewind time and they'd be back at the house on the shores of Sturgeon Bay when he wasn't the number two seed in men's tennis and she wasn't the college student he hadn't really fallen out of love with but couldn't be with because she needed to live her own life.

Things like that Troy, he told himself scathingly, only happened in Harry Potter and even then it was all fucked up.

She shifted slightly in his arms, snuggling closer and murmuring and Troy tightened his grip on her waist. His beautiful, beautiful Gabriella was going to wake up and hate him. She was going to hate him because he was going to get out of bed and leave a note void of feeling while he flew from San Francisco to Albuquerque and then from Albuquerque direct to Sydney, Australia.

If that didn't destroy any remaining link between them, then Troy wasn't sure what would.

"Baby. Brie." He whispered against her ear, kissing behind it gently. She shifted again.

"Hmm?"

"I have to have a shower."

She was only half-awake and Troy knew that she wasn't going to remember him talking to her. He knew she tended to forget things when she was in the state between consciousness and unconsciousness. Still she turned her head enough for him to kiss her properly.

"Go back to sleep." He whispered even when her hand lazy reached up to wrap around his neck.

"'Kay. Love you."

He froze.

Then watched numbly as she turned back onto her side and fell back into the deep sleep he'd roused her from.

As quickly as he could, he slipped out of the bed and stepped into the bathroom, shutting the door quietly behind him. Troy stepped towards the mirror that covered the wall above a granite basin and stared at his reflection. He looked tired, he thought absently, as he leaned closer, his weight balanced on the hands that were gripping the countertop. He looked tired and elated and terrified all in one.

He wasn't fooling himself as to why.

It didn't mean anything, he assured himself. She was half-asleep and wouldn't remember saying that too him when she woke to find him gone. If she did, it would be a memory she'd repress when she found out what he'd done.

"Fuck. Fuck. Fuck."

His quiet, tension filled words rebounded back to him in the bathroom and Troy wished that he could walk back into that room, crawl back under the covers and wake to find her watching him sleep.

Instead, he started the shower and stripped, stepping under the spray and steeling himself for what he was about to do.

Thirty minutes later, he stood at the door of the hotel room, a bag slung over his shoulder and staring at the figure still curled up in the bed that they'd shared for the first time in three years.

Don't do it, a part of his mind shouted as he stared at Gabriella, don't do it, drop the bag and go back to bed.

Why? If you do that, you're relationship will fall apart three months from now. Another, more logical voice pointed out. She won't be able to handle the pressure of your schedule and you won't be able to give her the time and attention you know she needs in order to be with you now. The voice continued. Wait, it cautioned, when it's time for you two to be together, you'll be together.

While Troy knew it was never a sane thing to listen to the voices in your head, the sensible, wise voice – which sounded suspiciously like his mothers – made sense. He wouldn't be able to give Gabriella what she needed now and he knew she would find it difficult to follow him. She was strong but he didn't think she was strong enough to handle him being in Australia one day and Spain the next. Not now, at least.

Before he could think about what he was doing, he snatched up the hotel notepad and pen and scribbled down what the voice had said, even though he knew it would have been safer to stick with a note void of emotion.

Carefully, he placed it where she would be able to see it and then, with one last glance at the figure curled up in the bed, Troy stepped out of the hotel room and knew that the next time he saw or spoke to Gabriella Montez, she was going to hate him.

* * *

_San Francisco, California – 2009_

The best and worst decision he'd ever made, Troy remembered as he dropped into the kitchen chair and discarded the letter.

The best because winning the Australia Open had allowed him to take the number one spot. The worst because all he had been able to do when he wasn't playing was imagine her face when she woke to find him gone.

He had regretted it the minute he'd stepped foot outside the room but knew he couldn't have stayed. He had been nearing his peak professionally and it was a peak he needed to reach in order to maintain. However, personally, he'd been a mess. He remembered that he'd fought with his parents, his brother and his friends more in those two months than he'd ever fought with any of them before. Only Chad had been able to put up with him and Chad had only managed that because he didn't have a need to speak to Troy every day.

Dropping the letter onto the table, Troy sighed. That letter was no help. Instead, he'd found himself reliving the memory of leaving her. Something, he admitted, he'd done too much in the past nine years.

He'd always seemed to leave her trying to be strong while breaking inside and Troy had wished every time it had happened that she knew he saw her break on the inside while she forced a smile on the outside. He wished she'd known that –

"Hey bro, remember we're meant to be having lunch right about now?"

Troy's head snapped around and for a moment he was slightly stunned by the sight of his brother in the kitchen doorway and then he shook his head.

"Sorry dude. I, ah, got caught up with something." Andrew Bolton, a younger, slightly bulkier version of his older brother, snorted when he saw the envelope.

"Catching up on your fan mail, I see."

Troy sneered at his brother's tone. "No. They're letters from someone we know."

"Since when do people mail letters anymore? Haven't they heard of email?" Andrew snorted, stepping into the kitchen and plucking up the letter Troy had discarded before his brother could stop him.

"Dude! Don't read that!" Troy exclaimed, making a grab for it and missing.

"Why? What's wrong – oh." His brother's change in tone said it all and Troy held his breath as his brother's eyes, lighter than Troy's own, scanned the first page of the last letter Troy had read.

Andrew's face grew dark as he continued reading before he read the last part and raised his eyes to look at his brother.

"Dude, you slept with her then left her alone in a hotel room?"

Troy blinked.

He'd been expecting many things from his brother. Andrew had, after all, been the most vocal about his disgust at the sudden turn his brother's love life had taken six months ago. He'd expected outrage because she wrote the letter, demand because Troy had read it and disgust at the fact that she had sent it to him.

He most certainly had not expected his brother to question his actions that the letter described.

"Uh. Yes."

Andrew nodded thoughtfully. "Its more complicated than the rest of us knows, isn't it?"

Troy, who had managed to regain some form of thought, lost it again at his brother's thoughtful question.

"Yes." He admitted quietly.

"Well, you know what would have helped six months ago, Troy?" Andrew asked handing the letter back to his brother and shoving his hands into the pockets of his jeans.

"What?"

"Telling us its complicated six months ago! How the hell did you handle me and mom denouncing her when there's more to it than either of us knew?" Andrew snapped at his brother and Troy shrugged.

"I trained. I played. I ate. I slept. I ignored it."

"And I imagine you thought that was a productive way to get over the fact that she left, huh?"

Troy snorted. "No. It's not a productive way to get over someone. But seeing as you're married to a girl that you've loved since you first saw her and who worships you in return it's probably not a good idea to be sarcastic about how your brother handled his fiancé leaving him."

Troy didn't mean to make his brother uncomfortable, he really didn't. But he knew he had when Andrew's shoulders tensed slightly. Troy often forgot that while he handled what had happened by ignoring it, the people around him often had trouble attempting to understand that in order for him to come to terms with what had happened he needed to push it from his mind for a while and then handle it.

This meant, he thought as his eyes slid to the letters and he eyed them thoughtfully, the fact that he was reading the letters meant he was ready to deal with it, handle it and try to figure out why.

Which brought him back to the reason he had read the third letter in the first place. Had he really expected the answer to be in her third letter? Obviously, he had. He supposed it would have been too easy if he'd found the letter she had written when she left. If there was a letter she had written when she had left, a voice whispered and Troy's eyes narrowed slightly.

"Troy. Troy. Man, I get it when you ignore me because you think that I'm annoying but this? Really?" Andrew's voice snapped him out of his thoughts and Troy's head snapped around to look at his brother and he frowned.

"What?"

Andrew rolled his eyes. "You're staring at the letters like they're the most interesting thing in the world. Why?"

Troy glanced at his brother and wondered whether it would be a good idea to tell Andrew that the reason he was staring at the letters was because he knew he was going to have to read every single one partly because he had a feeling that the answer to her leaving wasn't just in one single letter but in all of them and partly because there was that some part of him that was hungering for anything to do with her. Anything.

"No reason. Look, An, can we reschedule the lunch? I kind of don't want to go anywhere right now."

Andrew raised his eyebrow in a look that Troy remembered his mother saying they'd inherited form each other. "Uh, dude, we're having this lunch because Amy kicked me out of the house and I'm not allowed back until I've seen you and – "

"Made sure I haven't killed myself in a fit of angst and emotion over the fact that she left me?" Troy smirked at his brother. He appreciated the thought, after all, but he also knew that Andrew's wife had a tendency to be oversensitive towards someone who she perceived to have suffered.

"Pretty much, yeah." Andrew admitted and Troy rolled his eyes.

"Well, you saw me. I'm fine." Troy stood and stretched and Andrew folded his arms. "Seriously Andrew, I'm fine. I'll call you when I'm up to having lunch."

"You know, I'd love to believe that but to point out what you've been doing for the past six months, you've trained, played, ate, slept and ignored everyone. So while I do believe you want to have lunch, I highly doubt you and I are actually going to go out and have lunch before Christmas." There was a twinge of guilt at Andrews' words and Troy acknowledged it with a nod of his head.

"Alright. Just, let me put a shirt on, okay?" Troy asked and Troy wondered if the look on Andrew's face was his imagination or if his brother really looked relieved that he had agreed.

"Yeah. Okay. Some pants would be nice too."

Troy nodded and grinned, before heading out of the kitchen. He spared a glance back at the letters that were sitting on his kitchen bench and, while he knew that they were still going to be there when he got back, Troy was reluctant to leave them.

He spared a glance at his brother's face and knew that, while he desperately wanted to read the rest of his letters, he had been neglecting his family since she had left and his lunch with Andrew had been something he knew his brother had been looking forward too.

The letters were still going to be there when he got back.

* * *

A/N:...and we meet Andrew! I forgot that he was in this chapter. Which is weird because I reread this a couple of days ago. Anyway, I hope you enjoy and, as I said, it's one year apart and yes, Troy is kind of a jerk for doing what he did. I hope you all enjoyed it! I also mentioned the Australian heat because, if anyone was in Australia in January, you would understand why he had to adjust. I can remember watching Rafael Nadal play and being stunned when they announced that the temperature had reached 46 degrees celsius. So Australian summers are incredibley uncomfortable in January. The tournament he's heading to is the Medibank International, played in Sydney. So there you go, I hope you enjoyed the chapter!


	5. Chapter 5: Be Happy

Disclaimer: I do not own 'High School Musical' or any related characters nor do I own Taylor Swift's lyrics.

A/N: New update because I finished another chapter. It's kind of nice writing a story this way, instead of trying to write without planning. I hope you all enjoyed it, though there's not really much T/G interaction in this chapter mostly it's an assumption on my part about Troy's feelings, especially in the beginning.

Anyway, to anyone who is getting their HSC results tomorrow, good luck! I'm freaking out right about now but I hope you do well!

* * *

_**The Letters Never Read**_

**Chapter Five: Be Happy**

_I don't know what I want, so don't ask me  
Cause I'm still trying to figure it out  
Don't know what's down this road, I'm just walking  
Trying to see through the rain coming down  
Even though I'm not the only one  
Who feels the way I do_

A Place in This World – Taylor Swift

_Dear Troy,_

_ I got your message. I listened to it over and over again for an hour. I tried to decipher every change in tone, every phrase, every painful element in that long message and guess what? I know how you feel._

_ I know what its like to be pushed into something you don't particularly want to do, I know what its like to not know what you want and to still try and figure it out. I know what it's like to keep heading in the direction that you're heading without a clue what's going on in your life. I know what it feels like when sometimes becomes so hard you can't seem to handle it at all._

_ I want to say it'll be alright. I want to be able to hit two and call you back. I want to be able to soothe you as you try and cope with the pressure from sponsors, fans, coaches and players. I want to be able to talk to you, Troy. But I think you and I both know that your call wasn't a cry for help and it wasn't really over the pressure that you're under. You can handle those things Troy. You can handle your own helpless need simply because you know when you've had enough. You can handle that pressure Troy, because it's what you thrive under. You thrive under that pressure, you thrive when you know you can prove everyone's wrong. _

_ Your cry was, for the most part, a person who still doesn't know what he wants even though everything he thought he wanted is pouring into his hands. That Troy, I don't know how to handle anymore than you do._

_ Do you know that I still don't know what I want to do with my life? I still don't know if I should finish of my psychology course and open a clinic. I don't know if I should try and write a book about the Persian Wars and try and get it published. I don't know if that little niggling feeling in the back of my mind is really telling me what I want to do and I'm just ignoring it because I'm scared that it's not what I really want._

_ You, Troy, know exactly what you want. You're not like me Troy; you don't need to try everything before you find your niche. You've found your niche amongst the tennis elite of the world. You belong amongst those people Troy and you belong there because you've managed to find something you love uncomprehendingly and turn it into something you can do for life. You don't need the girl you loved when you were nineteen to tell you what you want because you're smart enough to figure it out yourself._

_ Besides, even if I do try and call you back you're going to pretend you never called me. That the voicemail you left wasn't about feeling lost and it wasn't about trying to figure out what you want. It was simply an old friend calling up to check on me. If that was true, then I wouldn't be writing this right now. _

_ Do you realize that your voicemail is the first time I've heard from you since you left me with that note? I've been avoiding watching tennis, ignoring news about you from my mother when I talk to her and trying to ignore the fact that you're quickly becoming a pin-up for girls around the world. _

_It surprised me slightly that I don't feel as much hate as I thought I would when you called. I figured I would still be furious with you. Still be hurt over being left. Still hating you for what you did and everything you represent for me. But I didn't. _

_ I felt sad, Troy. I felt sad because here I am, still in San Francisco, still going to Stanford. Still trying to figure out what I want and where I belong in this world and I'm __happy__. I'm happy, strange as it sounds, that I still haven't got it right yet. I'm happy that I've got my friends and those awkward dates that I can't seem to escape. I'm happy going to class and learning about everything and anything I want. I'm happy writing a thesis that makes no sense to anyone but my professor and me. I'm happy. _

_ You, Troy, aren't happy. And I think that's why you've found yourself so stuck. You sounded so unhappy on the phone, Troy and I felt so sad. Because you know what you want, you have it right within your grasp and you still feel like you're missing something. I don't know if it just you, whether you think that you're really missing something or if you really are without one thing that can make you happy. But I do know, Troy that if you only stopped for a second, looked around took in everything around you, you would find that you're not the only one who doesn't know what they want. You're not the only one, Troy, everyone else feels it too._

_ I don't know if there's any advice I can give you. I don't know if you should look desperately for that one missing piece or if you should take in everything you have and be content with that. I will tell you, Troy, to be happy. Be happy, remembering times that made you feel that simple contentedness, knowing that you have a loving mother and father and an adoring brother waiting for you every time you go home._

_ Life, Troy, is under no obligation to give us what we expect and I think you're feeling the most unexpected emotion of all for you. The uncertainty of not knowing what you want. But, believe me, you'll get through it. You'll know when one day you find yourself looking around and you realize you've been happy for a while, when you find that that uncertainty, the fear, was really nothing more than a passing speculation of a life that you know you have but can't seem to fully accept it. _

_ Life goes on, Troy. You'll continue playing tennis and I'll continue college and we'll both figure out what we want someday or another. But right now, Troy, you don't need me the way you think you do. You don't need to hear my voice the way you pleaded at the end of the message. You don't need to know that I still care, that maybe those feelings are really a love that's so deep I won't ever be able to get over it. You don't need me, Troy because you have to be need yourself for._

_ I don't hate you anymore, Troy Bolton._

_ You'll recover from this, you'll be fine._

_ I'm still miserable without you._

_ Gabriella_

_

* * *

__April 2003 – __Roquebrune-Cap-Martin, France_

He sat on the shore of the Mediterranean and stared out at the gentle waters that humans had admired for centuries. He kept opening and shutting his flip phone as he stared out at the sea and knew that his coach was going to send someone to look for him soon. Their flight to Barcelona was going to leave in a few hours and Troy knew that he needed to adjust to the Barcelonan climate, altitude and surface before the beginning of the Barcelona Open.

But for the first time in his life, he didn't want to go to what he considered to be one of his favorite tournaments. He didn't want to go to be prodded with questions about whether or not he thought he was going to win. He didn't want to go and be the favorite because he'd won the Monte-Carlo Masters. He didn't want to play, at all.

He wanted to go back to Albuquerque and sleep until noon in his own bed and wake up to his mother shaking his shoulders awake. He wanted to go back to Albuquerque and be…he wanted to be a twenty-two year old just starting out in his life and not one trapped in the life of his own making.

He was twenty-two years old with too much money, expectations that mounted with every game he won, every point that added to his total that pulled him that much further away from his opponents vying for the number one seed he held.

This was professionally, as well as personally, everything he'd wanted. Everything he'd ever dreamed about when he was ten and had told his best friend Chad that he wanted to be a famous tennis player.

Except, now that he had it, he felt like he didn't want it. He hadn't realized how lonely it was to be one of the elite. He was forever moving from country to country, continent to continent and the person closest to him was his father because his father was the only one around but that, Troy knew with certainty, was going to change soon. Jack was getting tired as he got older and Troy knew that his father wanted to go back to Albuquerque and spend his twilight years with his mother in the comfortably sized house he had brought for the two of them the year before.

This left his coach to travel with him in the next few years. Unlike many of the players he knew, Troy refused to have one permanent traveling companion that kept him company through out the year, mainly because it was assumed that the companions were the wives or girlfriends of the players and he hadn't had a serious girlfriend in four years.

He'd always planned on having someone there for him through out the year when his family couldn't support him. Someone who could make the numerous tournaments, the media scrutiny and the pressure of fending off the number two seed simply a job not a life and Troy knew that that someone had kissed him on the shores of Sturgeon Bay and hated him right now.

Even so, he flipped open his phone again and found her number. Unlike the other times he had called her; he didn't expect her to answer nor did he want her to answer as he pressed the phone to his ear and ignored the people standing a few feet away from him, whispering.

"_Hey, this is Gabriella, leave a message and I'll get back to you when I can._" Troy looked down at the sound of her voice, knowing that in all likelihood she'd hit end call and sent him straight to voicemail when she'd looked at caller ID.

Even so, he waited for the beep as he dug his toes into the soft sand beneath him and watched as the sun slowly began to sink into the Mediterranean. Hearing the beep, he briefly panicked, wondering what he was going to say and then he sighed.

"Hey Brie, it's me but I figure you already know that." He paused for a few seconds, wondering what else he had to say. "I – I wish you were here with me, Brie. I really do. I think, I think you would really like France, especially were I am now. It's kind of pretty." He stopped again, feeling stupid that he was talking about something she'd probably never imagined and trying to work up the courage to tell her machine why, exactly, he'd called.

"This is so messed up, Brie. So fucking messed up. I can't believe that I'm calling you even though I know you hate me and I can't believe that I'm calling you because I don't know what to do anymore. I mean, I've done what I think every professional player sets out to do. I'm the top seed. I'm the number one men's single's player in the world. I have so many points wracked up on the ATP World Tour tally that even if Jayden Mackenzie beats me in the next few tournaments, he still won't be able to touch me. I have endorsements flowing through the doors that would probably make your head spin. But…" He trailed off.

He felt his eyes sting and he was grateful for the aviators that covered the tired blue eyes he was famous for. "But it's like this isn't the place in the world for me or something. I've worked so hard for this, Gabriella; I've worked so fucking hard. I gave up the chance of having a normal life, of getting along with my brother, of having a normal family that isn't split because I have to be on the other side of the world, hell I gave up _you_ and for what? Endorsements, tournaments, an elite that few ever have a chance of making and holding? Why is it that everything I want is my life now and I suddenly don't know what I want?"

He stopped again, not sure what had caused that to explode from his mouth but feeling that weight shifting as he unloaded his feelings onto her voicemail. He swallowed hard as he watched the sunset before speaking again.

"I don't," he heard his voice crack and wished that it hadn't. "I don't know if you'll even get up to this point in the message, Brie but if you are you're probably wondering why I called you when I know you hate me. I called you because I know you can tell me what's wrong. I called you because you're the only person who I want here with me right now and after right now."

Her machine cut him off before he could think of any more reason behind why she had been the person to call. For a moment, he thought about calling her back and explaining the reason behind that message. Even as he pulled the phone away from his ear to hit redial he knew that he wasn't actually going to redial the number. His thumb hovered over the green button and then he shook his head and snapped the phone shut.

He wasn't going to call her back because she wasn't going to call him when she listened to that message. He'd called the one person who wouldn't call him back and Troy knew he'd done that for a reason but the reason right now escaped him. Was it because he knew he had called the one person who wouldn't tell anyone or was it because there was some part of him that desperately wanted her in his life and at that particular moment the only way he knew how to keep her in his life was to call her and burden her with the unhappiness in his life?

Abruptly, Troy rose to his feet as the sun sank lower into the Mediterranean. He shoved his phone into his pocket and knew that he'd better get back to the hotel before someone actually did come looking for him.

As he turned to head up to the town, Troy wondered briefly what he would do if Gabriella did call him back. If she called him back to soothe him and tell him it was okay to feel that way because everyone felt it too. It was a split second decision that told him he would pretend that he hadn't called if she called him back. He would make up some excuse that explained why he had called and, if she really did call, he would tell her not to worry he was okay.

Even as he continued to walk, Troy wished he knew what he wanted and he wished he knew how to figure out what it was that he wanted, right at that moment.

* * *

_San Francisco, California – 2009_

He remembered now why he had called her. He'd called her because she'd been the only one he'd known that would understand. She'd been the only one he could call who wouldn't judge and who wouldn't tell him he should be happy with what he had because it's what he had wanted for so long. He was so glad he was right.

Troy leaned back in the chair he'd occupied and glanced at the clock. Midnight and here he was reading her letter to him.

He remembered that time in his life well. He had been resentful towards all he'd had to give up in order to achieve everything he'd had at that time. He had been lost because he wasn't doing what a majority of twenty-two year olds had been doing at the time. He'd been mad because he would talk to Chad and hear all about his friend's college life and know that he would never be able to do that.

He had been, Troy remembered, resentful towards everyone and everything because he felt like he was missing out once again.

He had experienced that feeling of missing out quite a few times in his life. When he had decided to take his tennis more seriously and his parents had been warned that his raw talent could be trained into a lethal weapon on the court which could see him go professional, Troy had been sat down by his parents and asked if this was what he wanted. He had been asked if he wanted to be trained and possibly give up a normal life if he was good enough to join the ranks of professional tennis players around the world.

He remembered agreeing to it wholeheartedly.

It had been a decision that had never wavered until Gabriella had shown him what it was like to have an actual relationship with a girl who wasn't as obsessed with tennis as he was. It had been a decision that had never wavered until he'd dropped his focus and seen what he was missing and what other people his age took for granted.

True, he had never regretted his decision to pursue tennis. He'd never regretted the decision to push into the ATP World Series and the men's rankings. He'd never regretted a single decision, professionally, that had led him to where he was now.

But it didn't mean he'd never resented the decision or hated the fact that he couldn't go out on a Friday night and get so completely drunk that he couldn't remember what he had been doing that night. It didn't mean he'd never resented the fact that most of his friends were tennis players or intimately connected with the sport.

He had. He'd resented it in high and low ebbs through out his life but it he had never regretted the decisions to pursue tennis and then turn pro.

Throwing the letter down on the table and feeling slightly disturbed at the turn his thoughts had taken, Troy stood up. He was still dressed in what he'd worn to lunch with his brother. A lunch, Troy thought wrinkling his nose, which had turned into an afternoon with his brother and eventually dinner with his brother and Andrew's wife, Amy.

It wasn't that he'd minded going out to dinner with them or spending time with his brother. It was just that the letters had been on his mind since he'd left the house. He'd felt a need, that had slowly grown more desperate as the night had worn on, to read the next one, to find out what she had to say, to dredge up the memory that she was talking about and try and push it into the puzzle of why she had left.

So he'd come home late and had headed straight to the kitchen and her letters. He wasn't all too surprised that the next letter had been about his message, he hadn't expected it to be about anything less because he was beginning to sense a pattern in her letters. She only wrote one when there was something about their relationship that was worth writing about. Their separation in the beginning, the aftermath of him leaving, him her alone in the hotel room, so what was going to be next?

He could think of dozens of other moments in their relationship that she could have written about after he'd called her when he was twenty-two and unsure whether everything he had was what he'd wanted. But what moments had she chosen and did they contribute to the reason why she had left?

Instead of reaching down to read the next letter, Troy stalked into his dark living room, hitting the light for the kitchen as he went. The moonlight lit up part of his living room and Troy frowned as he moved over to the window to stare out at his darkened backyard.

Was he doing the right thing by reading these letters? He suddenly wondered. Was he doing himself any favors by trying to string together the reason she had left by using letters she'd written through out their relationship? Or was he doing what Andrew had pointed out when Troy had reluctantly told him he was reading the letters, was he tormenting himself with it?

He hadn't, after all, thought about her or the torment he'd gone through after that last fight and she'd left. He'd simply switched off when he knew for sure she wasn't going to come back; it had been a defense mechanism almost as much as it had been an avoidance method. By switching off, he'd simply stopped feeling everything he should have felt when she had left.

He knew switching off hadn't been the smartest thing he'd ever done. He knew that his family had worried and he had a funny feeling that her family had worried as well. He knew that one phone call to his mother would tell him where, exactly, she was and, as the thought struck, Troy couldn't help but wonder why he hadn't thought of it before.

Because if he had, Troy admitted to himself, he would have done something stupider then torment himself by reading the letters that she had written. If he knew where she'd been staying there was the possibility that he would storm into her apartment and demand why she had left or storm into where she was and hurt her the way he knew she had hurt him.

And wasn't it the stupidest thing in the world to use the hurt that he felt from her leaving against her when he didn't even know why she had left?

Yes, it was the stupidest thing in the world and it was even more stupid that he was standing at his window, in the middle of the night, rationalizing why he hadn't called his parents to find out where she was and confronting her about why she had left. Why she had suddenly given up on them.

He knew that one of these days, he was going to have to confront her. He knew that it wasn't possible for him to not confront her because he was going to have to confront her when he finished reading the letters.

* * *

A/N: So I learned something interesting in the chapter, the Monte Carlo Rolex Masters isn't actually played in Monte Carlo, just near it. It took me forever to make sure that was the right place too, so if I'm wrong please let me know. Anyway, that's the tournament he's attended and I hope you all liked this chapter!

Again, good luck to anyone getting their HSC results tomorrow!


	6. Chapter 6: The Way I Loved You Once

Disclaimer: I do not own 'High School Musical' or any related characters nor do I own Taylor Swift's lyrics.

A/N: What's this? Another update? Yes, yes it is. I really want to get this story finished and I'm on a roll with writing chapters and posting, so I thought why not go with the flow?

So here's the new chapter, with one of my favorite Taylor Swift songs, actually, I hope you enjoy it and if the end of the second part seems weird, there's a reason that will be explained in a later chapter.

Enjoy!

* * *

_**The Letters Never Read**_

**Chapter Six: The Way I Loved You Once**

_But I miss screaming and fighting and kissing in the rain  
And it's 2am and I'm cursing your name  
You're so in love that you act insane  
And that's the way I loved you  
Breakin' down and coming undone  
It's a roller coaster kinda rush  
And I never knew I could feel that much  
And that's the way I loved you_

_The Way I Loved You – Taylor Swift_

_ Dear Troy, _

_ You. Are. Unbelievable! _

_ What the hell? Are you seriously going to show up every time you find out I have a date? Do you have any idea how humiliating it was to have my date, my first date that I've genuinely felt something for, become a worshipping fool because you strolled into the restaurant, pretending that you didn't know I was there and then joining us for dinner?_

_ And you just sat there. You just sat there and smiled and pretended you had no idea why I was pushing food around my plate. You just sat there and pretended that you didn't know why I screwed up my face when you spoke to me or why those subtle hints that you dropped irritated me and why David (that's his name by the way) got confused when your words were full of innuendo. _

_ Do you know how embarrassing it was to tell David how I knew you? Do you know how sad I was to watch him shake his head and walk away because he knew from my voice that I wasn't over you? _

_ Do you have any idea how horrible it is to try to move on only to come back and be haunted by you?_

_ You weren't even mean to be in Albuquerque! You were meant to be in Europe somewhere! Wasn't Wimbledon on this month or something? Why aren't you in England? Why aren't you far, far away from Albuquerque? _

_ God. You are such a jerk! And you know what I hate the most? You know what I hate the most out of all of this? _

_ Afterwards, when David left me standing in the car park of that Italian restaurant and you strolled out with a smirk on your face and I turned on you. I turned around and yelled at you. I screamed and shouted and you stood there and you weren't surprised. You weren't surprised that I yelled and screamed, you weren't surprised that I cursed you and hit you in the chest. _

_ But I was surprised when you yelled at me. I was surprised when you yelled at me and demanded whether or not I really thought you'd really enjoyed that. I was shocked when you stood so close to me I could feel your body heat and I was even more shocked when you demanded, as rain we didn't know was threatening began to pour, whether or not I really thought you enjoyed the fact that you got jealous. _

_ I don't remember everything you said or everything I shouted I just remember the way your mouth fitted to mine after you demanded that. I just remember the way I clung to you and everything I felt came crashing down upon as you held me close and the rain poured down around us. _

_ God. I forgot how talented your mouth is and how much you can make me feel with just a kiss. I forgot how much I missed you and how much I hated you for leaving me. I forgot how steady and patient you could be and how incredible your body is. _

_ Now I'm sitting in your room, it's nearly two and I'm going to have to sneak out of your house and your room before dawn because we both know that if your parents figure out you had me spend the night, we would have some explaining to do. You're pretending your asleep right now and while I know that you're trying to figure out if we should bring up the fact that we have just slept together only hours after we were demanding things of each other that neither of us want to here, I know that we won't. _

_ We won't talk about it until its daylight and we have to sit across from each other and try and figure out if __now__ is the time to do what your note said. I promise you though, now is not the time for us. _

_ I know this because I think…I think we've both become two different people and while there's a way I loved you once there's also a way I need to love you now and I don't know what that way is. _

_ I loved you once Troy, four years ago by the Bay and the way I loved you then is not the way I think I could love you now. The way I could love you now is so different from back then when you and I would sneak out at two in the morning to go sit by the back and you would get me so mad sometimes all I could really do was yell at you. I miss that time Troy because everything seemed so simple back when I was seventeen and you were nineteen and we were just two teenagers who felt so much it was so easy for the other to break them down and have them come undone. _

_ It's different now, though. It's different because we are still as intertwined as ever but we're two different people and I saw that when we were standing in the car park earlier. You're a little more jaded, a little more cynical and a lot more focused. You know what you want and how to get it and I shivered when you whispered across my lips that I was one of the things you wanted and I know that you're going to woo me again and I know that I'm going to fall hopelessly back in love with you. I know, too, this isn't going to be the hormone driven love of that summer but it's going to be different and that difference is scary. _

_ I think, Troy, if I fell in love with you that way I would be terrified of it. _

_ There was a way I loved you once Troy and tonight proved that. I don't think either of us realized how much we missed what we could make each other feel by yelling at each other in the car park of an Italian restaurant, I don't think either of us realized how much we missed that rollercoaster rush and I don't think either of us realized how much we missed kissing each other. _

_ God, Troy, I think I could love you again. So much. _

_ Please, please don't make it scary for me. _

_ Gabriella._

_

* * *

_

_June 2004 – Albuquerque, New Mexico_

He was such a jerk. He knew it and he knew Gabriella knew it.

So how the hell did they end up sitting opposite each other in the bright kitchen of his childhood home, her dressed only in his shirt and him in his boxers?

Raising his coffee mug to his lips, Troy's mind rapidly tried to think of something to say to the woman sitting in front of him, plucking at the edge of his shirt and looking out the window. Instead of figuring out something to say, Troy found his mind stuck on the fact that Gabriella was a woman.

The last time he had really seen her, Gabriella had still been a teenager. At least, there had been something about her that had seemed teenage like and Troy had a feeling that it was because of the trust he'd seen in her eyes the last time he'd been face to face with her. The trust in her eyes that he had destroyed when he had walked out of that hotel room two years ago, he thought bitterly.

Now, instead of seeing a teenager sitting across from him, Troy found himself eyeing appreciatively the woman the girl he'd loved had turned into. She was more mature looking; her face had hollowed out beautifully and Troy took another sip of his coffee as he remembered the hint of what she was going to grow into when she was seventeen. Gabriella, Troy remembered, had been striking at seventeen now, at twenty-one she had fulfilled that hint and Troy couldn't remember meeting a woman more beautiful than the one sitting in front of him now.

"So, are we going to talk about it or are we just going to sit here?" Her quiet voice broke through his appreciative speculation and Troy blinked then he sighed.

"Do you want to talk about it?" he asked and she looked down at her own untouched coffee mug.

"We're going to have too, Troy." She pointed out quietly.

Troy blew out a breath. "Gabriella, if we talk about this we're going to end up rehashing the past."

"That's not true, Troy, we're both older now and we can both handle having a discussion about –"

"About last night? About the morning two years ago when you woke up to find me gone? About the fact that for some reason neither of us can quite escape the other? Yeah, let's have a discussion about that." He interrupted her harshly, his eyes clashing with hers as he spoke.

He didn't feel surprise when he noted the defiance in her eyes instead, he appreciated the fact that instead of backing down like the first time he had snapped at her or simply changing the subject so as not to upset the fragile bond that had been created from their night together, she was ready to argue with him.

"We're going to have to talk about it sooner or later, Troy. We can't just explode all over each other like last night every time we see each other." Her calm words had his face hardening and before he could comment on it because he knew provoking her would only make him feel more of a jerk than he already felt.

Biting his tongue, Troy stood up and stalked over to the coffee pot to refill his cup and keep himself from snapping back at her calm tone, the calm tone with words which were so true.

Setting the pot back down, Troy didn't move from where he was standing. Instead, he stared out the glass paneled door in front of him and wished he could turn around and face her.

How the hell were they meant to talk about this? He demanded of himself as he narrowed his gaze. It had been complicated enough before last night and now, well now complicated couldn't even cover what their situation was. After all, how did one deal with an ex-girlfriend that you couldn't forget but couldn't be with because of a career that demanded more of her than she was ready to give? And how did they deal with that while the aftermath of jealousy and irrationality was still swirling inside him?

He could remember the furious look in her eyes when he had strolled out of the cozy little Italian restaurant to find her standing watching as her date drove away because, he'd discovered when she'd whirled around to scream at him, she'd told David who and what he was to her.

Not that he'd let her get away with yelling at him for long. He could remember shouting back, what he shouted wasn't something he cared to remember but he could remember, clearly, the way he caught her hair in his fists, the way he brought his mouth to hers in a violent kiss and the way she clung to him as both were soaked to the bone from vicious rain that seemed to fit with the moment perfectly.

And all that had cumulated in a night where every little sound, every little movement threw him back to when he had loved her four years ago. A night where everything was so simple and easy and the morning…wasn't.

And he was back to how the hell were they going to talk about all this? Troy blew out a breath and knew Gabriella was waiting for him to say something.

"Okay," he turned around, coffee mug in hand to look at her. "We're not going to get through all of this now, Brie. Not when you're still fuming because I ruined your date and I'm not in the best frame of mind to listen to you rant about me running your date with Damian."

"David."

"Whatever."

He simply shook his head in dismissal of her snapped correction as his mind landed on a solution that might lead them to figure out the complicated mess they'd found themselves in.

"You want to know what I think we should do? I think we should be friends."

She stared at him. Troy thought he could see a hint of incredulity in her gaze and wished he didn't understand the look she was giving him because it was exactly the look he would have been giving him if the tables had been turned.

"Hey, I didn't think it was a bad idea." He defended the idea against her stare as she looked down at the table before she slowly rose from her chair.

"You want us to be friends?" She asked incredulously and, rubbing his coffee mug across his chest, Troy shrugged.

"Yep. Why?"

"Because that is the single dumbest thing I have ever heard!"

"And why would that be?"

"Because…because you and I cannot be friends! God Troy, we haven't spoken in a year! The last time I heard your voice before last night was when you called last year! And because we both know that it won't work!"

Troy watched in fascination as she threw her hands in the air before twisting them tightly as she moved towards him and her voice grew louder and more frantic as he watched her calmly.

Carefully, Troy placed down his coffee cup when she was within reaching distance. Reaching out, he grasped her wrist and gently tugged her over to him. He wasn't surprised when she allowed him pull her over nor was he unsurprised when she let him reach up and tuck a curl behind her ear.

"You just listed all the reasons why we should try and be friends, Brie." He pointed out gently. She shook her head and Troy caught her chin to stop her. "We have to talk before we work out the rest of the baggage that comes with us. We need to reacquaint ourselves with each other and each others voices before we try and figure out if we can work or not." He couldn't help himself. He combed the fingers which had held her chin through her hair and tangled it there.

"And? What else?" She asked softly, looking up at him through soft ebony eyes.

"We have to agree to a hands off policy." His voice lowered to a husky drawl as he lowered his mouth to within an inch of hers. "No touching, like this." He demonstrated by running his hand down her side to grip her hip. "No nuzzling, like this." His nose grazed her cheek as he nuzzled her cheek. "And under no circumstances, should I be allowed to kiss you, like this."

Their lips met and Gabriella let out a quiet moan as he took her under with him in what he desperately hoped wouldn't be their last kiss. Her hand rose to fist in his hair and Troy knew that this insane rush he always seemed to feel with her didn't have anything to do with the way he'd loved her before.

* * *

_San Francisco, California – 2009_

"Jesus fucking Christ, am I going to remember every single thing attached to these fucking letters?" Troy groaned, slamming his fist into his mattress and ignoring the pillow that fell down onto his fist.

"If you tell me what letters you're talking about then maybe I'll be able to give you an answer to that question, Troy Alexander."

"What _the_ fuck?"

Troy shot up the moment the first word left his mothers mouth. He only precariously managed to keep his balance as his eyes frantically flew around his room before they landed on his mother, calmly sitting in the chair he threw his laundry on and watching him with a concerned expression.

"Language, Troy, I know that this is your house but I'm still your mother and I don't appreciate that kind of language." Alison Bolton watched through calm blue eyes, a few shades lighter than her sons, as her eldest child gazed at her stupidly from his position on the edge of his bed.

"Uh…sorry." Glancing around, dazed, his brain sluggishly waking up. "Wait, what are you doing here? And how did you get in?" His brain snapped awake when he met his mother's sympathetic gaze again.

It was that look in her eyes that told him all he needed to know about why his mother was here. But, though his mind had snapped awake, Troy wasn't quite ready to have that particular conversation with his mother in his bedroom while he was half-naked. So he threw back his covers and swung his legs over the side of the bed. Staring at the floor for a moment, Troy tried to orientate himself and then he glanced across at his serene mother again.

"Mom? Why are you here? Better yet, why are you in my room?"

"Well, honey, I have a key because you sent you're father and I one, and I'm in your room because I let myself in an hour ago and, knowing you the way I do, knew you'd sleep for another hour so while you slept I made you some breakfast." Alison stood as she spoke, moving over to kiss the top of his head. "Go have a shower, breakfast'll keep until you're hair's less greasy."

"Fine." Troy muttered as his mother moved to leave the room.

For a moment, all he did was stare at the ground, feeling slightly confused as his brain attempted to catch up with the fact that he had a house guest while attempting to shake the last dredges of the dream from his mind.

"Ah fuck it." He muttered, feeling it was too early to earn a headache trying to add the last letter he'd read the night before to the puzzle of why she'd left and figure out the ulterior motives to his mother cooking him breakfast.

Fifteen minutes later, hair washed and wet, Troy jogged down the stairs and into the kitchen he figured his mother disapproved of. Seeing bacon sitting on the counter, Troy bypassed where his mother was sitting, with a coffee cup in front of her, to snatch up a piece of crispy bacon. Biting into it, he turned around to look at his mother and choked.

His mother was reading one of the letters.

"Jesus mom, I know Andrew talked to you about the letters but that doesn't mean you can read one!"

He reacted without really thinking about it and snatched the letter from his mother's hands. Glancing over it, Troy read the first line and was relieved when it was only the one he'd read the night before, not a new one she'd opened.

"What did I tell you about language, Troy?" His mother asked him primly and Troy, who had folded the letter neatly and slid it into his back pocket, just quirked an eyebrow at his mother.

"Not to use language like that." He muttered. "Mom, I know Andrew called you. So what did he tell you?"

"Troy, sit down and eat." Alison said calmly and Troy, who had swallowed the rest of the bacon, shook his head.

"Mom, come off it, I know you're here because Andrew called." Troy knew his mother didn't appreciate being spoken to like that but he couldn't seem to help himself.

Out of both his parents, Alison was the one that Troy hadn't felt close to since he was a child. She and his father, Jack, had agreed that one parent had to stay in Albuquerque and look after Andrew while the other traveled with Troy to the various tennis tournaments. Uncomfortable with flying, Alison had offered to stay with Andrew and the result was a sometimes awkwardly polite relationship with his mother that Troy hadn't been able to really repair as he'd grown older.

Still it didn't surprise him that at the first sign of him seemingly opening up after she left, his mother was sitting at his kitchen table watching him with the calm patience that she had never really been able to exercise over him in the last nine years.

"Troy, Andrew called me because he was worried about you." His mother folded her hands neatly on the table and Troy blew out a breath even as he rolled his eyes.

"You mean after I told him I was fine? Great, are you here to run an intervention? They're just letters mom, not a loaded gun." His mother was getting that look in her eye again, Troy noted as he spoke. The look that said she knew more about what he was going through than she was letting on and that she was expecting him to start talking about it soon.

"Troy, you haven't had any contact with her since she left, your brother was right to worry about you." Alison spoke calmly, noting the storm brewing in her son's eyes and trying not to react to it. "Honey, Gabriella was a sweet girl but we hardly thinks it's a good idea for you to be reading letters from her when you've been avoiding dealing with what happened for the past six months."

Troy saw red when his mother finished her sentence and his temper, one he controlled tightly because of the frustration of the game he considered his life, exploded.

"No, mom, _you_ think that it's not a good idea for me to not read those letters. Andrew thinks it's a good idea for me to talk about it. Dad thinks it's a good idea to take out my feelings physically. Chad thinks it's a good idea for me to freaking _eat_ my feelings. Why can't the lot of you just let _me_ decide what the fuck I need to do!?" Troy didn't comprehend the way his mother flinched at his words; instead he only concentrated on the rage that had built up at his mothers words.

"Because you haven't decided how to feel, baby. When you do, you'll know what you need."

Instead of soothing, the way he knew his mother wanted them too; Troy felt another spurt of anger. They were the words she would have spoken if he'd been in the middle of a meltdown after losing a match, a rare occurrence. He could remember calming down slightly whenever she said words like that, in a tone similar to his mothers. It made him even angrier.

"And how the hell am I meant to know what I need when _none_ of you can let me feel what I need to feel? Ever since she left all you have done is badger me about it! And now you show up because Andrew called me when he knew, he fucking _knew_ that I wanted to be left alone to read those letters!" Troy saw his mother simply blink and knew that he'd scared her. Holding back the urge to swear, Troy spun away from his mother and closed his eyes in order to control his temper.

Alison, judging that the explosion was only a prelude to the actual storm, rose from where she'd been calmly sitting and stepped over to where her son stood with his back to her. The need to comfort him, an instinct she'd had to smother as the more he'd immersed himself in tennis the more quickly he'd grown up and the less he'd needed her, rose and Alison knew that her son needed her right now.

"Troy, honey, these letters, why are you reading them?" Tentatively, Alison laid a hand on Troy's shoulder and felt how tense her son was. "If you're reading them to reminisce then I think that they - "

"I'm not reading them to reminisce, mom." Troy growled, ignoring the hand on his shoulder offering him comfort. "I'm going for a run and then to the courts." He shrugged off the hand on his shoulder and, ignoring the breakfast sitting on the bench untouched, he walked out of the kitchen, ignoring his mother's soft sigh as he stepped out of the kitchen, his fists balled tightly at his sides.

Who was going to show up next? He wondered sourly. Chad, Andrew, his mother and he had no doubt his father was going to be hovering around soon and he knew that all of them, very soon, where going to start asking questions about the letters. The questions, he knew, weren't going to be generic questions designed to not provoke his temper. They were going to be much more direct and much more challenging for him to answer and he hated that.

He hated that the questions were going to be more specific and he hated that his mother was standing in the kitchen of the house he'd bought for them, probably eyeing the letters he'd left sitting on the bench with a look of disgust. Why was it impossible for them to understand that he needed to be left alone? Couldn't they just accept that he didn't want them to hover around him? That he didn't want them to make him talk about?

How the hell was he meant to talk about something that he didn't understand himself?

And there was that thought again, Troy thought angrily. He hated that thought and he hated that he was slowly piecing together the reason she left him after that final argument.

But what he hated the most was that he didn't know if the way he loved her before was enough for him to ever speak to her again.

* * *

A/N: Okay, so there's the sixth chapter. I'm kind of hoping to get this finished before I fly out to England for the New Year, so updates will hopefully be really, really frequent!

I hope you guys liked it!


	7. Chapter 7: Untouchable

Disclaimer: I do not own 'High School Musical' or any related characters nor do I own Taylor Swift's lyrics.

A/N: Okay, so here's the next chapter. This has become one of my favorite Taylor Swift songs of all time, I think it's an absolutely gorgeous song and I hope I do it justice. There's also a light bulb moment in this chapter that kind of took me by surprise when I was reading it and then I thought, wait a minute, this could work.

I hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas and I hope you all have an awesome New Years Eve, I'm really looking forward to the Sydney Harbor fireworks display, they were pretty awesome last year so this year's should be even better, hopefully anyway.

Enjoy!

* * *

_**The Letters Never Read**_

**Chapter Seven: Untouchable**

_Untouchable like a distant diamond sky,  
I'm reaching out and I just can't tell you why  
I'm caught up in you, I'm caught up in you  
Untouchable, burning brighter than the sun  
And when you're close I feel like coming undone_

_Untouchable – Taylor Swift_

_ Dear Troy, _

_ So, we're friends. Friends who talk until midnight and hold on a little too long when hugging in greeting. Friends who get too close when watching a film and who kiss when it's three o'clock in the morning and nobody's standing there watching us for any indication that we're going to do something that we really should regret. I have a funny feeling that we're being watched because you're coach doesn't trust me with you. Apparently, if I leave after this summer, I could cause you some serious damage. At least, that's what you're coach has informed me about. _

_ But I don't think I can hurt you, Troy. I really don't anymore. Maybe once, when you were nineteen and we were head over heels in teenage love I could have hurt you. Maybe I could have hurt you then or maybe even the year after when I couldn't handle being around you I could have hurt you. But I don't think I can hurt you now Troy. I don't think I can hurt you because you're so damn untouchable now._

_ I'm not sure how this happened. I really am not clear on when you seemed to become distant from me. Maybe it was when you walked into that restaurant and saw me sitting there with David or maybe it's further back than that, maybe it's when you called me for help and I only listened to your message and wrote you one of these damned letters that I can't seem to not write when there's something between us that I can't talk about. _

_ Do you know, Troy, in my last letter I begged you to not make falling in love with you all over again scary? _

_ And it is. I know I'm falling in love with you all over again, except this time it's different. It's different because you're not guiding me as I fall and it's not the same love I thought I could fall into. _

_ It's not the same because you're untouchable and different and I don't know how I'm falling in love with someone untouchable. _

_ You're not untouchable in the sense that I can't walk up behind you and wrap my arms around you and you're not untouchable in the sense that settling my head in the crook of your neck when we're watching TV is something you flinch over. _

_ You're untouchable because if I tried to tell you that I'm falling in love with you all over again, you would simply look at me the same way you look at your opponent after a pre-game interview and they've said they're going to annihilate you on court. You would give me that look that's distant and slightly taunting, like I've said something that's not true and you're going to prove to me it's not true. _

_ That scares me, Troy. Being looked at like I'm an opponent who has tried to usurp you before you actually play is scary. Being looked at by Troy Bolton is what's the scariest part, though. _

_ Because that's what you would do if I told you every time I'm near you, there's some part of me that comes apart even from a brief touch of fingertips. That every time you glance up to me when I'm sitting in the stands I get caught up in the look you're giving me and not why you're giving it too me. _

_ You wouldn't look at me as Troy, you would look at me as Troy Bolton and I'm beginning to worry that Troy's going to stop coming around. Troy Bolton is as untouchable and as the stars, he steps out onto a tennis court, hard, clay, grass, and he doesn't shine, he burns. Troy Bolton looks at me warily. He touches my arm in public but would never put his arm around me. He watches me behind aviators and forces a grin when people ask if we're together. _

_ Troy Bolton makes what I want to say to you get stuck in my throat because I know that Troy Bolton was created to combat me. _

_ I don't want to hurt you, Troy but I don't want to tell you that when you're so untouchable! You just…you won't let me near. Emotionally, at least. I didn't want falling in love with you all over again to be scary but it is! It's scary because I don't understand what I can do to make Troy come out and Troy Bolton to stay pushed away. I know you think you're more relaxed around me and that being around me helps you but it really doesn't. _

_ I don't understand if Troy became Troy Bolton or if Troy Bolton is just a cover for the Troy who wants to be able to walk down the street and not be recognized but I want Troy back. My Troy. The one that prods me when he's awake at night because he can't get to sleep and the one who wakes up in the morning too chipper even though he's only had two hours sleep. I wish that that Troy would come out to play instead of me feeling nervous every time you're in the room because I don't know if you're going to be Troy or Troy Bolton. _

_ I don't even know if I want the touchable Troy or the untouchable Troy Bolton! _

_ I don't even know if I'm falling in love with Troy or Troy Bolton and I don't know if I'm falling in love with the man who is both. God, I'm confused about this, Troy. I really am because I'm afraid that if I fall in love with you I could live with the untouchable Troy Bolton as much as I can live with the Troy that likes to scare me when I'm listening to my i-pod. _

_ I think I could handle the untouchable Troy Bolton, even find him fascinating if Troy came out at a perfect moment and I could tell him that I'm falling in love all over again. I can handle your untouchability Troy, I can handle your distance and the way you seem to burn on court and off in the press rooms. I think I can handle that if Troy just comes out every time I need him too. _

_ I just don't know anymore. _

_ I know, though, that I'm falling in love with you again. I'm falling in love with you again under the guise of friendship and it's scary and unpredictable and confusing all at the same time. I know I can't tell you this because your untouchable at the moment, I want to reach out to you, Troy, but if I do I can't tell you why. _

_ Damn your untouchability, Troy Bolton!_

_ I want Troy back even though Troy Bolton seems to be the only person in this hotel room with me._

_ Gabriella._

_

* * *

__August 2005 – Toronto, Canada_

He had never been so tense in his entire life. A mixture of exhaustion, tournament stress and sexual tension was wrecking havoc on both his body and his mind and he was slowly being strung tighter and tighter as the days went on.

Why the hell did he assume that because they'd agreed to be just friend's that physical attraction that was moving from devastating to crippling would magically disappear?

He was beginning to regret his invitation for her to spend the summer with him. He remembered when he'd asked her to join him this summer; he'd been heading to Spain, recuperated from a strained muscle that had kept him out of Roland Garros that year. She'd been at Albuquerque International to say goodbye to him, their tentative friendship hanging between them loaded with all the things he hadn't allowed them to say when he had asked her if she'd be willing to join him in France next year for a few weeks.

And now here they were, Troy thought stretching his legs out in front of him and letting his head fall back, trapped in a hotel room together, desperately trying to stick the surface description of what a friend was and failing miserably at three o'clock in the morning just after he'd wound down from a five hour match and just before she allowed exhaustion to hit.

He wondered, briefly, what it was about early mornings that made kissing the beautiful woman he'd spent so long wanting by his side, so forbidden. Maybe it was the fact that in the dead of night, hidden from the world in a hotel room that was as impersonal as the next one, the guard he'd constructed to keep her at a distance during the day slipped at night. Or maybe it was the way she made it seem okay for the guard to slip at night, just by casually touching his shoulder or running her fingers through his hair when he had collapsed on the lounge when they had arrived at back at their room.

"Troy? What are you doing out here?" And the guard goes up, Troy thought resignedly, as he felt her step out onto the balcony of their hotel room, her hand automatically sliding onto his shoulder.

"Thinking."

Forcing himself to not shrug her hand off his shoulder, Troy tilted his head back to look at her and forced a smile. Her hand automatically rose to his hair for a moment as she returned his smile with a soft one of her own.

"About?" She asked, her hand drifting to sit warmly on the back of his neck.

"Things. The match tomorrow, what time our flight leaves and when you're going to have to go back to San Francisco, which might have to be soon." He felt her hand tighten at the back of his neck as he spoke and tried to pretend he didn't know he'd hurt her with his blasé words.

"Oh. Um, it's a night match tomorrow, isn't it?"

"Yeah. Quarter against Mackenzie."

Troy wished his tone didn't sound so indifferent as he spoke, especially when he could feel her hand on the back of his neck, her body close enough for him to slide his arm around, the illusion of a quiet couple enjoying the night a little to close to the secret want he'd been nursing ever since she'd agreed to travel with him.

"Oh, Jayden, isn't it? He's nice." Jealousy flared almost instantly when Gabriella spoke thoughtfully of his British rival and, before he could stop himself, he pulled away from her hand and froze the spurt of jealousy.

"Yeah. He's a really good player and sportsmen." He wondered if the flicker in her eyes was to do with his lack of reaction to her words. "He can be a bit arrogant but we get along." Troy chose not to tell her that Jayden Mackenzie was one of his closest friends and had commented, frequently, on the impact Gabriella seemed to be having on him.

"Sophia seems nice, too."

Troy glanced up at her sharply as she said the words. She was carefully avoiding looking directly at him, the hand he'd shrugged off tucked into the crook of her elbow and he knew that her words were loaded with an underlying meaning. An underlying mean he probably wouldn't understand, although he had a vague idea that it may have something to do with the flirting he'd engaged in with Sophia Capuana, the reigning women's world number one.

"Yeah, she is. You know she has a crush on Jayden, right?" He asked as he stood up and stretched, noting out of the corner of his eyes the way her shoulders relaxed at his words.

"Really? She seems to be more interested in you." Gabriella turned around and leaned back against the railing as he folded his arms and contemplated going to bed, knowing that if he stayed out here with her, he was going to kiss her again.

"Nah. She only flirts with me to make Jayden jealous, although the idiot can't seem to see that she'd rather flirt with him."

"Are you sure?"

Rolling his neck, a hand coming up to grip the tense muscles as he worked them, Troy tried to ignore her tone and the implication of insecurity in her voice. They weren't together; he told himself firmly, they were just _friends_. Friends, he repeated.

"Yes I'm sure that Sophia is interested in Jayden. He speaks Italian, her native language, unlike me and besides she thinks you and I are, well, she thinks you and I are, you know." _Friends_, that voice that resembled his mothers spoke insistently and warningly as Gabriella eyes darkened at his words.

"Oh. She thinks you and I are – okay. Um, how many other people think that?"

"I don't know Gabriella and I don't think it matters. Look, what everyone thinks we are shouldn't have any impact on our _friendship_." Yes, that was going to make her not think about it, emphasize the word friendship and watch that hurt he kept seeing and couldn't avoid creep into her eyes, Troy thought, disgusted with himself.

Silence fell over them as Gabriella turned her gaze away from his and looked out at Toronto, giving Troy the impression that she was trying to collect herself. She always seemed like she was trying to collect herself whenever he said something like that and he never saw her break, either, Troy suddenly thought. If his words hurt her, he never saw it and because he never saw it, he suddenly realized how much stronger she had become since she was seventeen and they'd broken up.

"Gabriella, I have to get to bed." Composed now, she turned back and met his gaze with something similar to indifference. Except, she was never going to be able to pull indifference off, he realized, she was always going to have that glimmer in her eyes that betrayed her feelings.

"Okay, goodnight."

Feeling like he'd been dismissed, Troy furrowed his brow and turned around to go into their room and get ready for bed.

Then he turned back around. That was too easy; her acceptance of his words was too simple and because it was so easy, so simple his guard slipped.

"Gabriella, are you going to stay out here?" He asked and she shrugged.

"Um, I don't know."

"Gabriella, it's nearly midnight." He pointed out and she shrugged again.

He felt himself grow frustrated not only with the conversation that was going nowhere but the space between them that he acknowledged now that his guard was slipping lower and lower.

Stepping over to her, he ignored the way she froze and caught her face in his hands. "Okay, goodnight." Briefly, as if to taunt the part of him that was warning him off getting too close, he lowered his lips to hers and held them until he felt her hands rise and wrap around his wrists.

"Troy." She sighed as he pulled away; he didn't reply instead he kissed her again before silently pulling away and turning around to head inside.

As he stepped into the hotel room, berating himself for acting on the impulse that always rose whenever she was close, it was night and she accepted whatever he said too easily, he heard her speak.

"Damn you for being untouchable, Troy Bolton. I hate that you're so unreachable."

And just like every other time he'd heard her say something like that, he ignored the urge to turn around and demand what she meant. Just like always, he straightened his shoulders and continued to walk into the hotel room, choosing saying nothing over saying everything.

* * *

_San Francisco, California – 2009_

Jesus, he hadn't been that bad, had he? Troy thought as he scanned the letter again, feeling the waves of confusion she must have been feeling crash over him as he reread _…I don't know how I'm falling in love with someone untouchable_. God, he hadn't been that bad had he?

Fighting the urge to read the letter again, Troy threw it down on the new coffee table his mother had somehow convinced him to buy and let his head fall into his hands.

What was he doing?

This was the sixth letter he'd read and he was no closer to figuring out why'd she left him. Instead, he was being bombarded with memory after memory of his actions during the times these letters had been written. He was adding the element of her feelings to them and he was beginning to understand how badly he'd treated her.

Why hadn't he been able to let her go? He wondered. She had put up with so much from him in the past nine years. He didn't want to think what came after this letter and he couldn't imagine what the eighth and ninth were going to be but he knew that all of them were going to make him regret his actions with her.

How had he not noticed that he had broken her heart and then rebuilt it only to shatter it again? How had he not noticed that during that summer she was confused and lonely because he couldn't let go of the terror he had of getting hurt again? How had he never noticed how utterly selfish he was?

"Stupid, stupid, stupid." He muttered, hitting himself in the forehead and wishing that he couldn't feel tears beginning to sting as he demanded questions of himself that he couldn't answer.

Why the hell had she stuck with him?

The thought, unbidden, rose in his mind and the burning in his throat had gotten worse. She'd loved him, obviously, but Troy knew people who had made do with their second choice and had been happy about it. She was a smart, strong, beautiful woman who had received him no less completely than the time she'd agreed to his offer of a date on the shores of Sturgeon Bay, every single time he had interrupted her life when he had a spare moment in his.

Was that why she had left? He wondered. Because she couldn't handle being fit in between tournaments, interviews, endorsements and country hopping. Because she didn't think she was important enough to him.

Had he ever told her she was important to him? Had he ever told her she was the centre of his universe and that without her everything in his orbit was useless? Had he ever told her _anything_?

"No. No, I didn't." He answered his own questions quietly.

For a moment, he considered wallowing in self-pity, wallowing in what-ifs and maybes. But he'd spent so much of the past six months wallowing in it. He'd spent the past six months pushing people away because she'd left and he didn't want to talk about it.

Now, for the first time because of the man he was, he forced them out of his mind. He pushed away the what-ifs and maybes and concentrated on the now. He had built an entire sporting career on concentrating on the now, on the single shot that would gain that extra point in a tie-break that would lead to the next match and the career of a lifetime.

In a tie-break, Troy repeated to himself, the burning in his throat receding slightly as he sat up straighter. A tie-break, point for point. Serve for serve. What if, he suddenly thought, this was their tie-break; the one that would either would win him the match or lose it all after playing long, hard sets.

Sure, the rules for this might be a little different; she was getting her serves in now, inadvertently of course. But he could counter with a perfect forehand down the line, Troy thought. A perfect forehand.

Narrowing his eyes, Troy began to calculate his options even while acknowledging that maybe he should use her medium. Maybe using her medium of communication would be the perfect forehand that hit the inside of the line with a deadly accuracy that left his opponent horrified that they'd never seen it coming while acknowledging the brilliance of the stroke.

Troy decided that the smile settling on his face wasn't grim but tentatively hopeful as he rose from his couch and jogged into the kitchen, finding his mother cutting carrots for the dinner he hadn't realized she was preparing.

"Mom, do you think Gabriella leaving me is my fault?" It was a tribute to his mother that she didn't cut herself at his blunt question and the free use of her name, he hadn't, after all, spoken it since she had left, he thought.

"What?" Alison carefully laid down the knife and raised her eyes to study her son. There was something different there, she thought, the defeated look he'd carried for six months had dimmed. Now, his eyes, always so expressive, had lit up with what she knew was his battle light.

"Do you think she left me because I never told her what she needed to hear?" Troy repeated and Alison bit her lip, wondering where this was coming from before sighing.

"I don't know, honey. You never really let us know what was happening in your relationship." Alison said somberly and Troy blew out a breath.

"Huh, let me fill you in. I was a selfish bastard who never told the woman I loved she was the center of my universe. Instead, I hurt her and can't figure out why she stayed with me when all the signs as to why she left me are there." Troy was grateful his mother wasn't holding the knife when her face paled at his words.

He let the words hang in the air and waited for his mother's verdict. Whether she knew it or not, it was her voice he had listened to when it had come to handling Gabriella and he wanted to listen to it know.

"Honey, what brought this on? The other day you could barely stand to be around me because I was 'hovering'." Troy started to interrupt and Alison held up her hand to silence him. "Not to mention you yelled at me, in what I thought was just a preview of the major temper explosion we will experience, when I tried ask you about the letters in a vague attempt to get you to open up about your break up."

"So?" Troy asked, wincing when he realized he sounded like Andrew when he was a petulant teenager.

"So, I think that this…mood change is a little sudden and a little off-setting. That anger and hurt didn't just go away, Troy. It's still there. What happened?" She asked and Troy wished that his mother's voice was in his head not standing in the kitchen, dressed in quiet grey slacks and a simple white shirt, watching through gentle blue eyes.

"Okay, mom, its still there. I'm still pissed that Andrew called you and you showed up, hell, I'm still furious with her and myself for even _wanting_ to read these letters but I can't just let her go. I can't. Look, I know I've only read the sixth letter and it's probably going to get worse before it gets better but nine years, mom. _Nine years_. We have been involved with each other for nine years. I can't let that go. And neither can she." He wondered if he sounded as desperate as he thought he did as Alison folded her arms and looked at him, contemplating.

"Are you sure? Because, honey, this could all blow up in your face and I don't think anyone can handle watching you hurt all over again."

"I'm sure. Look, if it doesn't work, I won't ever think if her again, I promise but I need to at least try. Match point, mom, tie-break in the seventh set. I need that one forehand that can be repeated and pull me equal to an opponent that's miles ahead of me. Yes I'm angry, frustrated and confused but the match isn't over yet and neither is this tie-break."

He could read his mother like a book as Alison fought against her common sense and her love for him and he knew the moment she let her love for him win. He fought back the grin as she sighed and picked up the knife again.

"Alright. I imagine there's a reason that you decided to tell me all of this and while I still think it's slightly odd that you've done a complete one-eighty on me, honey, I'm here to help if I can."

The combination of love and resignation in his mother's voice made Troy move over to her. Wrapping his arms around Alison's waist, Troy planted a kiss on her cheek and hugged her tightly from behind. Yes, their relationship was probably not a good one but Troy couldn't help but rub his cheek against his mothers and he couldn't stop the surge of love he felt when she laid a hand over his.

"I love you, mom." He muttered, unembarrassed at saying the words because there was no audience and feeling the pleasure his words brought his mother when he spoke them.

"I love you too, honey." Alison replied, clearing her voice when it broke a little. He hadn't spoken those words to her since he was sixteen and he had nearly quit tennis and had turned to her instead of his father to talk. "Now, what did you want from me?" She asked.

Troy kissed his mother's cheek once more and then stepped away from her, making a mental note to buy her something nice when he left the house next. She deserved it for putting up with him for all these years.

"I need you to get Gabriella's new address for me, off Anna. Please." He added. Alison only paused chopping for a split second before she continued with a nod of her bowed head.

"Alright. I'll call Anna tonight."

Troy kissed his mothers cheek again. "Thank you. I have to go out for a bit. I'll be back, in like, half an hour, okay?"

"Alright. Don't go over otherwise you'll miss dinner."

Troy raised a hand in acknowledgement of his mother's words before plucking up his car keys and wallet, which had been sitting, unused since he'd blown up on his mother and headed out of the house.

Gabriella Montez wasn't going to know what hit her when he placed that first, perfect shot down the inside of the line, he thought as he unlocked his car. She wasn't going to know what hit her, at all.

* * *

A/N: I love Troy's logic in this. Only a male would be able to use a sports metaphor to explain his actions or the actions of someone else. I personally think it's hilarious when they do, but that's just me. Anyway, the tournament that Troy's at was the Roger's Cup in Canada, played on Hard Court, the players alternate between Toronto and Montreal but for the sake of it, I've stuck him in Toronto. I hope you enjoyed it and Troy's sudden change of attitude will be explained in the next few chapters with maybe the other half of this equation making an appearance in the next few chapters!

Happy New Year to everyone!


	8. Chapter 8: Never Simple, Never Easy

Disclaimer: I do not own 'High School Musical' or any related characters nor do I own Taylor Swift's lyrics.

A/N: Okay, so this is my favorite chapter. I'm not kidding, I love this chapter, I loved writing it and I love the song and I love Troy in the middle bit. It may seem a bit odd, especially once you read the chapter but I don't know, I just really like this chapter. I think it shows strength in both Troy and Gabriella but I'll let you all decide!

Enjoy!

* * *

_**The Letters Never Read**_

**Chapter Eight: Never Simple, Never Easy**

_And we know it's never simple, never easy_

_Never a clean break_

_No-one here to save me_

_You're the only thing _

_I know like the back of my hand_

_And I can't breathe _

_Without you but I have to_

_Breathe – Taylor Swift ft. Colbie Calliat_

_ Dear Troy, _

_ I – I can't breathe. I stopped breathing when I stepped onto the plane at Heathrow International Airport to head back to San Francisco. _

_ I thought it would be easy. I thought even though I was in love with you, I could handle leaving you standing in the airport watching me walk through the gates that would take me far away from you. I thought it would be a simple goodbye like last summer. _

_ I can't believe I can't breathe without you. _

_ It's something akin to physical pain, Troy. I stepped through the doors of my apartment and I collapsed. I've never collapsed like that before, Troy. Never. Not even when I found out I only had you for one night when I was twenty. Not last summer when I left you standing in the airport, untouchable. _

_ Oh God, I don't know when it changed. Did it change when you looked at me and said that you didn't think it was a good idea for me to come next summer? Or was it earlier than that? Was it when I woke up in your bed and you looked at me, your eyes telling me it wasn't time? Not now. _

_ Did it change when I looked at you and knew that I was going to spend the rest of my life with you?_

_ I sat in my apartment doorway for an hour, Troy, trying to get my breath back, trying to cry even though tears weren't going to help. You wanted a clean break. Is this a clean break? Is it? _

_ Because I know you're sitting in your hotel room staring into space wanting to know why you did it. I know you are Troy. And that just makes it that much harder to breathe._

_ I can't breathe without you, Troy. _

_ I wonder if this is even going to be legible. I'm crying. I can't believe I'm crying. _

_ Damn it, Troy I want you to walk through that door and make me breathe again. This time, I think you've done irreparable damage. Never have I wanted you to walk through my apartment door and save me. I have never needed you to walk through that door and make me start breathing again. _

_ I have never thought you were the only one I know like the back of my hand. _

_ Why did you think this was going to be easy? Why did I think this was going to be easy? Were we stupid? There's nothing simple or easy about not breathing without you, Troy._

_ My friends are worried. Sharpay, especially. She keeps asking me what happened and all I can do is shake my head and try not to cry. _

_ Because this time we parted on equal terms. On equal ground. You warned me when we decided to be friends again that we couldn't jump back into it because it wasn't our time. Despite that warning, I still managed to fall in love with you. We still managed to kiss and make love at every opportunity, we knew it was wrong but couldn't help ourselves. _

_ I thought it was hard leaving you when I was seventeen and in love for the first time. I thought it was difficult a year later sitting in my car listening to songs about lost loves and crying in my room in the middle of the night because I missed you. I thought it was difficult waking up in the morning and finding no trace of you in a hotel room. I thought it was difficult hating you instantaneously. I thought it was difficult listening to you struggle as you tried to figure out if everything you thought you wanted was really what you wanted. I thought it was difficult falling in love with you even though you seemed so untouchable and far away from me._

_ I thought it was difficult being with you this summer and not being able to tell you that I love you because we were just friends. I thought it was difficult watching as you flirted with the women's champion even though you were never going to take it further than flirting. I thought it was difficult making love with you that last time because there was some finality to our love making and the kiss you gave me just before I fell asleep curled in your arms._

_ None of it Troy, __none__ of it is as difficult as sitting in my apartment right now trying to breathe because we both agreed it would be better if I didn't go back next summer. What are we trying to prove? That we can be without each other? I don't think that's possible because somehow Troy, we're still going to be connected to each other. We are always totally and uncomprehendingly going to be connected to each other in some way. _

_ I just wish that we thought this through before we agreed. I wish that you weren't sitting in your hotel room fighting to put up that psychological barrier that no-one can seem to break and I wasn't sitting in my apartment in my oldest sweats writing this letter you'll never read and fighting to breathe without you. _

_ I wish, instead, that I was sitting on your lap and watching as the sun sinks below the skyline and you were telling me about the next tournament and who you thought was a threat and who you thought was simple practice, even though we both know that you consider everyone you come up against a threat and you will never, ever give them an inch. I wish I was turning to you right now and kissing you and interrupting you as you talked. _

_ This isn't a clean break Troy. It's not a clean break and it's not a simple situation. There's no-one in San Francisco who can help me breathe again because you're the only one who can save me from this. There's no-one in this world that I know better than you and there's nothing I can do about any of it. _

_ I can't breathe without you, Troy Bolton. _

_ I can't breathe without you and I can't seem to live without you. _

_ But I have to live and breathe without you. If I don't then I don't think we'll ever get passed this point._

_ I love you. _

_ Gabriella_

_

* * *

__June 2006 – Wimbledon, England _

He was a jerk. A complete and utter jerk. Why did he assume that it was harder having her with him than being without her? She'd only been gone for three and a half hours and here he was, sitting by the pool at his hotel in Wimbledon and steadily drinking his way through the beer he couldn't remember buying, his mind so far away from the tournament that was starting in two days and focused solely on the fact that he was a jerk who couldn't remember what it was like to breathe freely.

He didn't hear the door to the pool swing open, only knew that if the person was someone looking for an autograph they were going to fucking disappointed to find the reigning Wimbledon champion and world number one on his way to getting so drunk he couldn't remember a thing.

Jayden Mackenzie stepped into the pool area and held back a sigh when he saw one of his closest friends sitting forlornly on one of the pool chairs in the corner of the area, four beer bottles sitting on the table next to him. He'd received a cryptic call from Troy's coach, Adam Laver, twenty minutes ago and only now fully understood the meaning behind Adam's worried message.

Gabriella Montez had left and his friend was drowning his sorrows with alcohol, two days before Wimbledon.

If Jayden was less of a person, he would take the clear signs of distress as a good sign and his mind would be working on how to use Troy's state of mind against him when they came up against each other, either in rounds or in the quarters, semis or finals. But even though he wanted to win Wimbledon, snatching the most prestigious grand slam right from beneath Troy, four years of solid friendship had Jayden choosing to ignore that part of him and instead approached his friend carefully.

"You know, I understand that the reigning Wimbledon champion needs a break before he goes out and annihilates everyone on court, including me but mate, I don't think I quite understand _this_."

Troy grunted. "'Course you don't, you and Sophia are still doing the dating dance."

Troy knew that Jayden knew what was going on as the Londoner settled himself next to Troy in the spare chair Troy had been using for his beer. He didn't bother to protest when Jayden, after examining the brand carefully, cracked open one of the bottles and took a thoughtful sip.

"So, are you going to tell me what happened or am I going to have to make up some shit about why you're hung over tomorrow?"

Troy raised the bottle to his lips and drained the last of the beer in an attempt to formulate an answer to Jayden's question without vocalizing exactly what he was trying to not feel by drowning it out with alcohol.

"Gabriella left today." Short and to the point, Troy thought bitterly, just like the way he had told her it probably was better if she didn't come back next summer for a few weeks. Just like the way he was telling himself what a jerk he was over and over again.

"And that warrants getting drunk." The disbelieving note in Jayden's voice reminded Troy, a little late, that the man sitting next to him was one of the few people who had a grasp on reading him perfectly. It was an irritant on court, one that made their matches the most exciting in the sport at the moment but it sure as hell pissed him off to remember now.

"No."

"Ah, so there's more to the story?" Jayden took another sip of his beer as Troy placed down the one he'd finished down on the table and picked up another one, opening it and taking a long drink.

"Duh." Troy snorted and then wished he really was drunk enough to not feel the need to tell someone as Jayden raised an eyebrow at him. "Six years, Jay, and all she does is stand there and nod when I tell her it's probably better if she doesn't come back next year. All she does is_ nod._ Nod, for Christ's sake, she nods and then walks through the gate without turning back!" Troy struggled to not raise his voice when he spoke even as he struggled with the fact that those words had managed to escape him under his friends understanding silence.

"So, she nodded?" Though Jayden had a wicked sense of humour that would likely operate at his expense later, the calm edge to the cockney voice was enough for Troy to plough ahead with what he was saying instead of responding to the stupid question.

"After everything, after six years of back and forth of phone calls and a relationship that isn't a relationship but really, it _is_ a relationship, all she does is nod when I tell her that it's probably not a good idea for us to see each other again. Who does that? Who nods? Who leaves a person standing there waiting for them to say something to convince them otherwise? What the hell does she want from me if all she does is nod when I tell her not come back?"

Jayden didn't speak for a moment and Troy had a feeling he wasn't speaking because he was trying to figure out an answer to all his questions without seeming to side with either of them.

Why should he bother being neutral, though? Troy suddenly thought as Jayden took another thoughtful sip of his beer. Jayden was _his _friend, not Gabriella's and Jayden certainly wouldn't just nod if Troy tried to cut off their friendship, he would fight for it, wouldn't he? He certainly would, he wouldn't nod with that look in his eyes that told Troy that he'd destroyed something he didn't understand.

"Troy, did you ever think that maybe you gave Gabriella the impression that you didn't want her to say anything?" Jayden asked quietly, examining the label of his beer bottle and hoping that Troy's brain wasn't so muddled by alcohol that he would be able to answer the complex question.

"Of course I know that. For fuck's sake, she thinks I'm into Sophia even though I've told her that there's no way in hell I'm into her because she has a thing for you." Troy snapped and Jayden sighed again.

"That's not what I meant, mate. What I meant was what if Gabriella thought you didn't want her to fight for it? What if she thought that maybe it wasn't," Jayden paused to search for the phrase that Troy had used once, when he'd attempted to explain his relationship with Gabriella to him. "Your time, yet? What if she figured you sending her away meant that it wasn't 'time' for you guys to pull it all together?"

"But what if it was time? What if it was the time for us to figure it all out? What if her fighting for it meant that it _was_ our time, that her arguing me in the middle of the airport was the sign?" Troy asked, his breathing coming out quicker than normal, the short shallow gasps worrying Jayden slightly as Troy closed his tired blue eyes. "How the fuck are we meant to know it's time when she doesn't want to fight for it?" Troy demanded and Jayden suddenly caught a glimpse of how volatile Troy was at that particular moment.

For a moment, the Brit simply stared at his friend, absorbing the depth of feeling and the struggle of emotions coming from his friend who was clenching the beer bottle so tightly his knuckles were white. Is that what love did? Jayden wondered as Troy struggled for breath. Did love really snatch the breath from you when the person you needed most walked out of your life with simply a nod at the one thing you wanted them to refute? Was it even possible for someone as strong as Troy to break because the woman he loved simply accepted what he'd said without even a word?

Watching his friend, Jayden suddenly realized how badly Troy was hurting. Sure, the alcohol was probably manifesting Troy's hurt due to it's label as a depressant but, as Jayden watched Troy struggle to control his breathing and emotions, even though the world number one had tried to keep her at arms length through out the entire time she was with him in the past two years, somewhere, somehow, Troy had managed to fall in love with her. He'd fallen in love with her while trying to push her away and now, he was trying not to hurt while wanting to know why she hadn't fought.

Now _that_, Jayden thought, was an interesting contradiction. Even as he thought it, Jayden suddenly realized what his friend was about to do and couldn't react quick enough to stop Troy from hurling the beer bottle to the ground and crying out in frustration.

"Why the hell can't I breathe when she's not here?"

* * *

_San Francisco, California – 2009 _

He'd lost; Troy remembered vaguely, he'd lost to Jayden in the final that year. He hadn't been able to keep his head on straight and even thought Jayden had spent as much time as possible with him to keep him from doing something stupid, like over indulging in alcohol again, he hadn't been able to pull it together on the court long enough to beat him back from taking his Wimbledon crown.

"That year sucked." Troy muttered, throwing the letter down onto the table and leaning back in his chair.

It was dusk and Troy was sitting out, ironically, at his own poolside. The pool water was reflecting on his leg even as he heard his mother, father and brother shuffling around inside, attempting to organise a dinner that he wasn't allowed to help with because he'd gone out and done the grocery shopping. Troy had a funny feeling, though, that him not helping with dinner was going to land him doing the dishes by himself while they dissected what, exactly; he was going to do with Gabriella's address.

His mother had handed over her new address that morning, with a cryptic warning about not being what he expects and Troy had been surprised to open the page to find that she had moved to San Jose. He had figured she had moved back to Albuquerque to be closer to her parents or he had even entertained the idea of her moving across the country to Maryland or New York. He hadn't figured she'd stayed in the San Francisco Bay Area nor had he considered she was within driving distance either. Somehow, having her within driving distance made him a whole lot less sure of him and his plan to bring them equal in their tie-break.

She was just…so close. How could she have been so close and how could he have been unaware of it? He asked himself as he gazed at the letter for a moment. That, Troy he told himself, was like demanding to know why she had left him with only a nod when he knew the reason was him and him alone.

Hindsight, Troy thought leaning back thoughtfully, was an interesting thing. He had a feeling that if he had asked her to stay instead of sending her away that his life would be totally different right now. He wouldn't be sitting out by this pool by himself, no he definitely wouldn't be.

They'd be outside together, chatting casually as he sipped slowly from a bottle of beer while she sipped a glass of orange juice, no pulp. Her long, ebony curls would be pulled up in a high pony tail and she would be dressed comfortably in one of those floaty, floral dresses she liked to wear when she returned from work. He'd be listening to her tell him about how difficult some of her classes were because the teenage students enjoyed challenging their teachers and it was exhausting trying to keep up with them. He'd be dressed only in his board shorts because he had a plan of coaxing her into the pool when she was fully relaxed, the plan forming in his mind as he listened to her talk. He'd tell her that she was doing perfectly as a teacher when she voiced her doubts and then playfully inform her she wouldn't have to deal with those students anymore; her maternity leave was coming up.

"Troy?"

He was pretty sure he'd never jumped so high in his entire life when he heard his sister-in-law's quiet voice from behind him.

"Christ Amy, don't sneak up on me!" He spun around to face the small blonde his brother adored, his mind clearing of the picture he'd created that was all too real and focused on Amy Bolton who had raised her eyebrows at him.

"Sorry, didn't realize you were off in your own little world." She said with a roll of her eyes. "I was sent out to see you. Apparently, my help in the kitchen isn't needed either."

Troy snorted. "Amy, between you and me, the only one of those three people who can cook in the house behind us is mom, so what's actually happening in there?"

"They're talking about you. Andrew thinks your unstable because of these letters, Jack's trying to convince Andrew that you are anything but unstable and your mother is trying to point out that maybe whatever your planning is something that you need to do without interference from your father and brother. By the way, what are you doing?" Amy rattled off while sitting down in the chair opposite him and folding her arms.

"Amy, seriously? They sent me out of the house to argue over me? Damn, they haven't done that since they'd thought I'd snapped over losing Wimbledon and were worried about me." Troy commented, glancing at the letter in front of him and remembering his entire family flying to Hamburg, Germany in order to ask him what had happened in the Wimbledon final.

Amy eyed him, as if trying to recall what had happened in the Wimbledon final he was speaking of before Troy watched it click. He tried not to be too pleased with himself at changing the topic so skilfully. Amy had only just started to date Andrew when they'd taken off for Germany and, because of that, she hadn't been privy to the worries and fears the family shared for Troy at that particular time. So he wasn't surprised when she perked up slightly at the subtle invitation to ask about it.

"You mean that time when they had that fight about when to go and see you? Like how Jack wanted to wait for a little while, Andrew was all for leaving right after you apparently fell apart on court and Alison wanted to let you do it yourself?" She asked and Troy nodded, with a wry smile at her quick sketch of his family's reaction to his loss.

"Yeah. They left it a while; the German International is in the middle of July. Did Andrew ever tell you the reason why I apparently fell apart?"

Amy wrinkled her nose slightly, the movement causing her already young face to look even younger, at his question.

"No. He mumbled something about it being personal and I forgot to ask after that." She replied truthfully and Troy laughed slightly.

"He could have told you." Troy told her, reaching for his beer and smiling at her before continuing. "I didn't win Wimbledon that year because Gabriella left two days before the tournament commenced. I was fine through the rounds and most of the finals but I fell apart when I got to the fourth set. Jay tried to make it seem like I hadn't fallen apart and the fourth set was going to be the closest one yet, 'cept it didn't work and my game and my mind just deteriorated from there." He informed her, feeling a sweep of gratitude as he recalled the way Jayden attempted to make it seem like he was actually fighting to keep his title before it became all too clear his mind was not on the game.

"Oh wow. I didn't realize one person could affect your game so much." Amy gasped and Troy had to grin. He'd forgotten that while Amy was his sister-in-law, her knowledge of tennis and the factors involved in a match was little to none.

"Yeah, it is pretty amazing. She never knew that, though. She never knew I somehow managed to throw the Wimbledon match because I couldn't quite bring myself to believe that she'd gone and she wasn't going to come back."

Troy's grin faded as he remembered the feelings that had tormented him for the entire tournament and he remembered they'd finally pushed their full effect on him when he'd glanced up to the stands and only seen his coach sitting in the box reserved for his family and friends. It had been that which had snapped his psychological barrier in that match and Troy was never going to forget the way he'd watched Jayden serve and only managed a lacklustre return into the net as his mind had demanded Gabriella while a vise had wrapped tightly around his heart and squeezed painfully.

Because he didn't want to think about that match or the way Jayden had attempted to hurry the proceedings along before accompanying him out of the stadium and away from the masses who were all scrutinizing Troy and theorizing about his loss to his biggest rival.

"Oh, Troy. That's so sad." Amy whispered, reminding Troy that she was sitting beside him and watching him sympathetically.

"Yeah. It kind of is. I'm renowned for the way I approach the game psychologically, so losing Wimbledon like that sucked."

"I wasn't talking about that, Troy." Amy said softly and he glanced over to her, knowing that he'd brushed off her implication because he didn't think he could handle someone else talking about his and Gabriella's relationship. "I was talking about the fact that you must have really loved her three years ago for you to throw something as important as your third consecutive Wimbledon title and that it's really sad that she doesn't know how much you loved her." Amy said, standing up as she glanced back towards the house and saw her husband throwing his arms in the air, a sure sign he was frustrated with his parents.

"Huh, I never thought of it like that."

He really hadn't, Troy realized as Amy narrowed her eyes slightly at him. He really should have realized that refusing to tell Gabriella what he was feeling and how important she was to him wasn't doing anything for their relationship.

"Obviously, or she wouldn't have been so quick to leave," Amy said and it was Troy's turn to narrow his eyes at the blonde, who smile and ruffled his hair before gesturing towards the house. "I have to go inside before my husband kills one of your parents; your dad seems to be the prime contender from what I can see, so I'll see you inside, okay?" Troy nodded and watched as the blonde headed a back inside his house, to join his mother and his father – the latter having only arrived that day – in the house.

Why, Troy thought suddenly as he heard the door close and his gaze returned to her letter, was it that someone who didn't even know him that well could see through the words he'd spoken to what had been really sad about that year?

His entire family had been there in Hamburg, Troy remembered, and none of them had realized he hadn't been sad about losing Wimbledon, he'd been a mess because he wasn't waking up to Gabriella every day, he'd been struggling to breathe properly because even when he'd been cold and untouchable, cruel and arrogant to her, she'd still been there, readily touching him in a way that always made him breathe more easily.

And if they hadn't fought about whatever the hell it was they'd fought about, she would be sitting next to him telling him about her day, Troy frowned at the thought. How was it that he still wanted that with her, even though she'd left him? He wondered before sighing when his mother called him for dinner, making him feel like a twelve year old again.

As he stood slowly and began to walk towards the back door, he frowned as the answer to his question floated through his thought.

Was it even possible that he still wanted that with her because without her, breathing was always going to be just that little bit harder?

* * *

A/N: It probably is slightly odd that I love this chapter but I really do. My favorite chapter so far and I hope you guys liked it too. It was very simple to write, surprisingly, it kind of just flowed out. I hope you guys enjoyed it because I really do like the chapter. I love Anna too, she was fun to write. The tournament is, of course, Wimbledon. I had to put Wimbledon in there somewhere. It's kind of the biggest tennis tournament in the world, everyone knows about it. I hope you enjoyed!


	9. Chapter 9: Later

Disclaimer: I do not own 'High School Musical' or any related characters nor do I own Taylor Swift's lyrics.

A/N: There's not much to say about this chapter, except I think the last chapter over shadows it quite. But that's my opinion and because I really love the last chapter.

I only have one warning, don't get your hopes up with this chapter, just because of its contents. There's a major problem that neither of them address.

Still enjoy!

* * *

_**The Letters Never Read**_

**Chapter Nine: Later**

_I'll leave my window open,  
'Cause I'm too tired at night to call your name.  
Just know I'm right here hopin'  
That you'll come in with the rain  
_

_Come In With the Rain – Taylor Swift_

_ Dear Troy, _

_ What are you doing here?_

_ I'm pretty sure I didn't ask you that when I opened the door to my apartment and was confronted with you dripping wet from the rain that's been pouring since the beginning of this week. I don't think I asked you anything at all, actually. You just wrapped your arms around me and held on. _

_ Now you're asleep on my couch and it's only now that I see how utterly exhausted you are. How could I have never seen it before? I've never seen you so exhausted and I can remember how worried I was about you when you stopped for a few days after a month of tournaments and slept for those three days. I can't believe how easily you hid your exhaustion from me every time we spoke on the phone, I can't believe how I never saw it in your post game interviews or that I didn't listen to the tennis coach at my school who always went on about how it was impossible for someone to play for as long and as hard as you do without faltering or giving in to exhaustion._

_ I can't believe I was so wrapped up in how much it hurt me every time there was that pause in our conversations where our 'I love you' should have been that I didn't realize that exhaustion in your voice wasn't just from the match you'd just played but from all those other matches. _

_ I can't believe you're here. _

_ I thought…I thought you were in Europe all this month, wasn't it something like Switzerland, France then London? All in one month, one tournament after another? Wasn't this month the final of the ATP World Tour? Wasn't there some sort of special ceremony thing for you to go to as celebration of your finishing the year as number one? God, did you really just get on a plane and fly out of London when you were sure you had no other obligations after that final match at _

_ I can't ask you now because you're fast asleep but I have to tell you Troy, that little ball in my stomach that formed when you told me not to come back in London? It's grown tighter and is now lodged tightly in my chest even though I can feel that block that stopped me from breathing loosen because you're here. _

_ I don't even know why you're here, for all I know you could have come personally to sever all contact with me because it's too hard. I know Troy; I know how hard it's gotten between us since we decided that two summers spent together is enough. I know how hard it has gotten because sometimes I sit at my bay window and I'm so tired of hoping we'll pull it together enough for us to even __have__ that conversation about what we are. Or what we should be. Or what we're going to be. _

_ I'm tired of wondering about it, Troy, of questioning whether or not we will come back together and it'll work the way you said it would work on that crumpled note I keep in a wooden box under my bed. And I was so tired of sitting by my window every night contemplating calling you and only putting the phone down because I'm tired of this dance we seem to be doing every single time we talk on the phone. _

_ Are relationships meant to be this complicated? Is it just about to get even more complicated because you walked through my door thirty minutes ago and I have no idea what's going to happen now that you're here? _

_ Oh my God, what if you're as exhausted as me with it all? What if you knew that I was tired of calling for you and letting you know that my door is always open for you? That I was hoping that you'd come in with the rain that seems to be a constant in San Francisco at the moment._

_ I'm so exhausted. I don't think I can repeat it enough. I don't think I even know how exhausted I am. I don't. But I don't think I can imagine what you're going through right now. I don't think that's even possible for me to comprehend how physically tired you must be combined with…well I don't even know what it's combined with. You say so little to me over the phone Troy, so little and what you do say is coded or so blunt I'm left so stunned I can't even offer you a reply until afterwards when I know exactly what to say. _

_ What are we doing, Troy? Why am I rehashing this while you're asleep on my couch, exhausted and still untouchable? Why does it even matter now? I don't know why you're here, I don't know if you're really here to sever all contact with me or if you're here to tell me it's time or if you're here because you don't know what to do with yourself the way you didn't three years ago. _

_ Do you know what I'm hoping?_

_ I'm hoping that you'll wake up and tell me that the reason you flew from New York to San Francisco is because you're here to tell me you love me too, that you want me to rejoin you on tour when I can and that we're going to walk down the streets holding hands like I've always wanted to do since that summer by Sturgeon Bay. _

_ But I don't think that's what's going to happen. I could read you back on Sturgeon Bay; I could even read you when you left me in that hotel room but I haven't been able to read you since I stepped off that plane to join you for Roland Garros._

_ So even though I'm sitting here hoping that you'll wake up and tell me that you've finally figured out you love me and that the reason you walked into my apartment was because you're here to tell me that it's time to give us a chance. That you're ready to stop holding yourself back from me and whatever else you seem to be holding back from._

_ I know that it's a stupid thing to hope and I know it's almost like I'm hoping for my movie ending but I don't care._

_I don't care Troy because I'm sitting here, watching rain fall and hoping that the reason you've come in with the rain is because you're as tired of pretending as I am and that you're ready to tell me everything I need to hear. _

_I love you, Troy, even if you're fast asleep on my couch and wet from rain. _

_I hope you're here to tell me what we need to do to get ourselves out of this. _

_Gabriella _

_

* * *

__November 2007 – San Francisco, California _

"Gabriella?"

The disorientation he felt as he slowly dragged his mind out its sleepy haze was something that irritated him as he struggled to sit up. The couch wasn't exactly comfortable and it didn't offer the support he was used too as his body protested as he sat up.

Closing his eyes tightly, Troy swung his legs over the edge of the couch and had to smile ruefully as a small part of his brain pointed out that he'd known he was going to regret catching a plane out of London as soon as the World Tour Finals had finished and he'd fulfilled all his post-final obligations.

His body, that finely tuned weapon on court, ached all over and, as he opened his eyes to look for the petite brunette he'd rushed from London to see, Troy knew he was going to have to get back on court as soon as possible in order to work out the soreness and the kinks that he had acquired during the marathon match against Thomas Fernando, a Spaniard who's backhand was lethal and temper often got the better of him.

"Brie? Are you here?" He spoke again, opening his eyes and scanning the apartment for the brunette who had looked so shocked when she had opened her door to see his exhausted silhouette.

When all he received was silence, Troy frowned and stood up, knowing he was going to have to go in search of her and feeling uncomfortable at the thought. Still, he hadn't flown all this way to not tell her something he'd been working up the courage to tell her ever since she had left him at Heathrow the year before.

Carefully inching his way around the coffee table, Troy wondered how many rooms there were in her apartment and how many he would have to look through to make sure she was actually in the apartment.

Stepping out of the living room, where the uncomfortable couch was the centerpiece of the room with a desk covered in papers sat in the corner, Troy moved hesitantly down the hallway, away from the front door and wondered how _big_ this apartment actually was as he saw and opening and turned into it.

An ear splitting scream stopped all wondering as he jumped back when he felt someone pound their fist into his shoulder, making him wince slightly due to the strain it had been under twenty-four hours ago.

"Troy Alexander! I'm going to kindly ask you to _never_ do that again!"

Blinking slightly, his heart hammering in his chest, he looked down at the person who was hitting him and met angry ebony eyes that glared up into his own and made him smother a smirk as he realized he'd found his woman.

"Sorry. I woke up and couldn't find you. How was I supposed to know you were in the," he glanced over her head and his eyes swept over a pristine kitchenette, "kitchen?"

"Well, you could have _stayed_ in the living room couldn't you?" She snapped at him, huffing slightly when she realized he was grinning at her and making Troy grin harder.

"Nah. I've never seen your place. It's…small, I think."

She rolled her eyes. "Small, you think? Troy, it's actually pretty big and way more than I can afford."

"So why do you have it?"

She bit her lip slightly at his question, giving him the impression that there was something about this apartment, in an old building – a rarity in San Francisco – that had caught her attention and made her normally sensible attitude towards things like budgets get thrown out of the window.

"Well…come on, I'll show you."

Raising an eyebrow, Troy dutifully followed her down the hallway and into what he could only assume was her bedroom.

It wasn't a small room by any means, with a bed – neatly made – in the center of the room and a dresser pushed up against the wall on one side. His eyes purposefully skipped over the photos on the dresser and focused on the ones on her bedside table, he felt his stomach turn slightly as his eyes found a photo of them together. One that had been taken when his guard had been down and it was easy to hold her tightly against his body.

"This is why I'm renting it."

He quickly dragged his eyes away from the picture and schooled his face to neutral when he was met with two big Bay windows that looked out over the city. Despite the rain hitting the panes with a ferocity he remembered from when he'd run upstairs to her apartment, he could tell that it was a beautiful view that she…she looked out over whenever she could.

He chose not to comment that he knew she looked out of it whenever she was thinking of him, that he knew she sat by it and stared when they finished those conversations where everything was so loaded down with everything they didn't want to say

"Wow. Gabriella, these windows are great." He said, stepping closer to her in order to look out them more clearly.

He felt her body brush against his and heard her quick intake of breath when he leaned over her to see out.

"Yeah, they are great, aren't they?" She spoke quickly, as if in defense of her reaction to him and he leaned back, shoving his hands deep in his pockets as he turned to her.

He met her eyes for a brief moment before letting them wander over her face and noting how tired she looked. It looked much like the exhaustion he'd begun to feel every time he hung up the phone and wanted to bang his head against a brick wall because of all the things he wanted to say to her but couldn't force out of his mouth.

"What are you doing here, Troy?"

Her question caused his eyes to snap away from the shadows under her eyes to meet them. He waited a beat, watching as self-preservation warred with hope in her eyes and then he swallowed and spoke.

"I'm here for you, Gabriella. There are a lot of reasons why I'm here for you." He added, foreseeing her next question and stopping it before she could ask. "I'm here, Gabriella, because I can't hang up the phone every night and wish I'd said more to you. I'm here because you deserve more than a phone call every night filled with random conversation. I'm here, Gabriella, because I'm sick and tired of fighting what we're meant to be just because I'm afraid you won't be able to handle my schedule."

There was more, so much more to what he needed to say to her. He needed to tell her he loved her and that he knew what a horrible person he was for treating her the way he had during those summers she was with him. He needed to tell her he was in it for good now and that he had a ring in his pocket because he didn't know any other way of keeping her.

There was so much more to say and he would have said it if Gabriella hadn't pulled his mouth down to hers in a desperate kiss that spoke of all the things _she_ wanted to say but wouldn't until later.

An arm wrapped tightly around her waist pulling her close as his hand rose and tangled tightly in her hair. He slanted his head and probed her open even as she tugged at his shirt. His hand on her smooth skin, the way she arched into him, dragged his mind out of the shocked haze that had enveloped it when her mouth had pressed frantically to his the moment he'd taken a breath.

"Gabriella, wait." He struggled to hold back a groan when her snaked under his shirt, scraping her nails over his smoothed, defined abdomen as he tried to pull some semblance of order back to the conversation.

She shook her head. "No. Later. You're here and it's time."

He wondered, briefly, what she was talking about and then found he couldn't think at all as she kissed him again and he sank down into her kisses. Believing, perhaps foolishly, that the time to speak would come later when they weren't so occupied with reveling in touching each other and the hope she'd harbored that he would come in with the rain wasn't running so freshly through her mind as they clung to each other.

* * *

_San Francisco, California – 2009 _

Later never came, Troy remembered. Later turned into buying a house and a proposal only a month after they had begun to work things out. Later never was the conversation they should have had before he had proposed or she had accepted. Later was never that conversation where he told her all the reasons he needed her and gave her the choice to walk away.

Later turned out to be a fight neither could remember who started and her walking out with a slamming door in her wake.

Later, Troy thought, was all fucked up.

Putting down the second last letter and standing up to pour his second cup of coffee for the morning. Troy leaned against the kitchen counter thoughtfully. He wondered if he had pulled away and put enough distance between them that night, would they have still ended up where they were today. If he had told her what was going through his head and what she needed to know, would that epic fight they'd gone through six months ago still have happened?

Back to what-ifs and maybes, he thought with a sigh. Even though he'd decided a week ago that he wasn't going to think about those again, he couldn't help it when that memory was dragged to the forefront of his mind.

"Troy, my man, you're not sulking!"

Hearing the loud voice of Chad had Troy spitting out the hot coffee he had just taken a sip of and splashing the rest of it out of the cup and over his wrist.

"Jesus, Chad! How the hell did you stay quiet?" Troy snapped at his friend, who stood in his doorway, dressed in old basketball shorts and a basketball jersey, his afro pulled back into a tight bun and a basketball under one arm.

"Um, I don't know?" Chad actually looked confused and Troy couldn't blame him. Chad wasn't exactly known for his ability to be stealth, especially when it came to walking through Troy's mess of a house. Chad hadn't been able to stop himself from tripping over the boxes stacked against the walls ever since he'd started to drop into Troy's house.

"Smart answer. What are you doing here?"

"Well, your dad called and said something about getting you out of the house and 'cause I'm such an upstanding type of guy, I figured why not drag my tennis buddy down to the basketball courts and show him what a real sport is like?" Chad grinned, throwing the basketball at Troy who, having put his coffee down, caught it with a grin.

"Whatever. You know that I'll beat you, right? Just like I beat you at tennis when you were so sure you were going to win that."

Chad scoffed. "Whatever. I was having an off day that day. I know for a fact that I can beat your ass at tennis just like I'm going to beat your ass at basketball."

"Oh yeah?" Troy raised his eyebrows.

"Yeah."

"Alright, I'll do you a deal, if I win both basketball and tennis – two sets, no tie break - will you drive with me to San Jose next week?" Troy asked, his mind working as he tried to figure out a reason to tell Chad why he needed to go to San Jose without even hinting at what he actually wanted to do in San Jose.

"Uh, sure. I think my schedules free. But if I win, you have to come to Vegas with me!" It was the most outrageous, ill thought out term to a bet that Chad knew he was going to regret the minute he'd blurted out the words. Troy never went to Vegas and there was a gleam in Troy's eyes that warned him that he probably shouldn't have agreed to the bet.

"Alright, but if I win, we go to San Jose in your Jag." Troy grinned. Chad's Jaguar was less than three months old and hadn't been taken out of the garage yet, much to Troy's chagrin. He wanted to know exactly what that car could do and he figured that it was a little less conspicuous than showing up in Chad's Lamborghini.

"No! That car - "

"It's either that or we take your Lamborghini." Troy grinned and Chad narrowed his eyes. Troy waited for a moment, watching as Chad attempted to figure out where the bet had come from and why it seemed important so to Troy that he would risk going to Vegas.

"She's in San Jose, isn't she?"

"You know, Chad, you're not as stupid as everyone gives you credit for." Troy grinned and jogged over to him, patting him on the shoulder as he attempted to sidle past his friend and his question.

"Bolton, why are we going to San Jose?" Chad demanded following him as Troy headed towards the stairs.

"Chad, I have a question for you, why do you assume we're going to San Jose when we haven't even begun playing the games?" Troy turned around to narrow his eyes at his friend and was pleased when Chad looked caught.

"Uh…hurry up and get changed dude, we have to claim a court before someone else does."

Troy chose not to smile victoriously as Chad glared at him before turning and heading up the stairs.

He had to wonder, as he began to pull clothes out of a drawer that he hadn't shut properly the night before, if Chad knew that Troy had outsmarted him, a rarity due to Chad's ability to see through most of Troy's schemes before they had been fully lifted off the ground.

The minute Chad had suggested a game of basketball; Troy knew that he needed his best friend with him when he drove down to San Jose. He supposed it would have been easier to ask Chad than tricking him into accepting a bet but Troy wasn't willing to take any chances. He needed Chad with him as much as he needed Chad's Jaguar XF to get them there.

Because he knew that if he pulled up in his car, she was going to know exactly who it was and he didn't think he really wanted to let her know that it was him that had driven to see her because if she did know then there was, in all likelihood, a chance that she would refuse to see him.

Which was why he had started with his first serve, straight down the line, in what he knew was an ace.

He just hoped it worked.

Because he didn't want to think about what would happen if his counter to her serves didn't work, Troy chose to ignore the stack of envelopes sitting on his bedside table and pulled on a pair of basketball shorts and a wife beater.

Grabbing his tennis bag and a pair of trainers, he stepped out of his room, hoping to god he was in shape enough to play basketball.

Even as he stepped out, Troy glanced back at the stack of envelopes and prayed that it worked.

He prayed that the 'later' now wasn't too late at all.

* * *

A/N: Ah-ha...and what's Troy going to do now, I wonder? Anyway, I hope you enjoyed this chapter. The tournaments Gabriella refers to in her letter is the Davidoff Swiss Indoors Basel, played in Switzerland, the BNP Paribas Masters, played in France and the Barclays ATP World Tour Finals, played in England.


	10. Chapter 10: Always Chased

Disclaimer: I do not own 'High School Musical' or any related characters.

A/N: I AM SO, SO, SO, SO SORRY!!!!!

I feel terrible. Honestly. I swore I was going to finish this story before I left for the UK and then when I didn't I thought 'It's okay, they'll have internet I can use over there.' Only, the internet I was allowed to use for the past three months turned out to have blocked FF, my laptop wasn't working so there was no way I could even post an authors note explaining what was happening! I have never been more irritated in my entire life. To top it all off, this is the only chapter I haven't posted on my memory stick, the rest have yet to be put on there and they're on my laptop back at school.

So...I'M SO SORRY!

Basically, I am and I feel horrible and I hope this chapter kind of makes up for it because I really like this chapter!

I hope you all enjoy!

* * *

_**The Letters Never Read**_

**Chapter Ten: Always Chased **

_I'll still leave but baby all I want is you_  
_To stand outside my window throwing pebbles_  
_Screaming, 'I'm in love with you'_  
_Wait there in the pouring rain, come back for more_  
_And don't you leave cause I know_  
_All I need is on the other side of the door_  
****

**_The Other Side of the Door - Taylor Swift_**

It was impossible. There was no way it could be gone. She had put it in the box she'd snuck into the house under bed sheets. Along with two of his shirts, pictures she'd snatched when she'd snuck back into their apartment when she'd been sure she was out of the country, and other objects that had meant something to her and that she knew he wouldn't miss. The box, that plain looking, oblong box filled with her most precious memories, had been one of them.

Now it was no where to be seen and Gabriella Montez was panicking.

It couldn't be gone; she could remember clearly placing it carefully in the bottom of the box before placing one of Troy's shirts over it, one of his playing shirts that he hadn't taken with him when he'd been out of the country. So there was no way that box and those letters had found its way out of the house.

There was absolutely _no freaking way_ it had left the three bedroom cottage she and Sharpay were renting until she was back on her feet.

Because if it really was gone and not hidden somewhere in the many nooks of the cottage, the step forward she'd taken a few days ago when she'd woken up and Troy hadn't been the first thing she'd thought about, was about to rectified with two gigantic steps back because this box was so _important_ to her and the relationship she'd run from six months ago and the only reason she had been able to take that step forward.

"It can't be gone. It can't be gone." Speaking aloud, the petite brunette, who was dangerously thin and glaringly tired, circled around the cheerful living room that she'd thought was sweet and tried to remember if she had even been brave enough to take the box out of the cardboard box that sat in the back of her cramped wardrobe, only pulled out when she wanted to be wrapped in something vaguely like Troy's warmth.

It wasn't gone; she assured herself, she'd just taken it out of the box and couldn't remember where she'd put it. That was the plausible explanation, the one that made sense as she circled the living room again.

Unless…before she could stop herself, Gabriella found herself paling as she wondered if she'd left it in the apartment. If she'd left it in the apartment then he would have found it by now. He would have found the letters she'd written to him when there was too much happening and too much to feel and she could only watch him instead of sharing it with him. He would have read the letters and he would hate her now more than he ever had before. Because the letters were the only thing she'd ever really kept from him and wouldn't it just be like Troy to feel as if she was rubbing salt into an open wound even though she wasn't there?

Biting her lip and blinking back the tears at the thought of Troy hating her more than she already knew he did because of letters she'd never let him read, Gabriella folded her arms and lowered herself onto the edge of the worn couch Sharpay had stolen from her twin brother, Ryan.

This wasn't fair; she thought as she vaguely registered the sound of the postman's bike, it wasn't fair that she'd woken up this morning with the feeling in her stomach that warned her something was wrong. It wasn't fair when she'd discovered the box missing and the tears welling as she'd stared at the picture of him kissing her cheek as she giggled. It wasn't fair that the fear was still there and that the overwhelming need to go back to him and burrow deep into his arms was stifled by the will that she'd done the right thing, just in the wrong way.

She could remember the slamming door as she'd stormed from the apartment that had been hers and had become theirs. It had hurt the minute she'd gotten to her car and she'd realized he hadn't chased after her.

What had she said? She couldn't remember what she had said or what had started the fight, she could only remember feeling tears begin as she realized he hadn't chased after her the way she had thought he would.

Because that's what he had done for the past nine years, she remembered, he had chased after her because he'd needed her. When he'd walked out on her in San Francisco, he'd been the one to come to her. When he'd shown up in Albuquerque and interrupted her date, he'd been the one to suggest they keep talking. When he'd flown her out to wherever he was in the summer, he had been the one to make the moves. When he'd come to her when they'd both realized it was time, it had been _him_ that had come to _her_. Not the other way around.

So she had just assumed that he would chase after her, the way he had before. She had assumed that he would come and find her in the first month, the hope she'd carried had lasted into the second and then the third. When she had snuck back into the apartment to pack up her things, she had hoped maybe he'd catch her and they'd talk instead of yell.

She hadn't assumed they would cut all contact with each other, that she would move an hour away and cling to clips on the news when he would speak about his latest match or tournament. God, she hadn't thought that slamming a door in his face would cause the understanding that their engagement was over and that they were never going to speak to each other ever again.

She'd figured once she had calmed down enough, he would show up with coffee and pastries at Ryan and Sharpay's and they would talk, the way they did after every fight or misunderstanding between them.

Why the hell had she just _assumed_ all of that?

She'd known that the fight had been totally different from their other ones. There had been so many emotions and doubts woven into that one argument, Gabriella wondered how she could have been so naïve as to assume Troy would chase after her.

"Honey, I love you, but what's with the total annihilation of our living room?"

Gabriella started at Sharpay's inquiring voice and she spun around to see her friend standing in the entrance to their living room, mail clutched in one hand with her hand bag in the other.

"Huh?"

"Gabi, the living room? It was relatively clean when I left to go to the grocery store, now it looks like a bomb has ripped through it."

"Oh, yeah, I was looking for something." Gabriella glanced around the living room, wondering why she had thrown the pillows around the living room before glancing back to her friend. "Have you seen a plain wooden box? It's like an oblong and it's important."

Gabriella decided not to focus on the fact that Sharpay's eyes widened fractionally as she spoke, a sure sign that Sharpay knew something and was about to lie about it.

"Uh, no. No, I haven't." Sharpay stuttered and Gabriella furrowed her eyebrows before turning around, deciding that she'd think about Sharpay's answer later.

"Oh, um, did you find what you needed at the shops?"

"Hmm?" Sharpay hummed as she took a step into the living room, beginning to flip through the mail that she was holding and flipping over the first one she knew was the electrical bill. As she opened it with her finger, Sharpay carefully eyed her friend, surprised that it had only taken Gabriella a few weeks for her to figure out that the box was missing. She'd obviously underestimated Gabriella's silence on the matter and her feelings towards the man she'd left.

"Did you get what you needed at the grocery store?" Gabriella repeated as Sharpay frowned at the bill before shoving it back into the envelope and flipping to the last letter of the pile.

"Huh?"

"The stuff you needed. What was it? Frosting in a can or something?" Growing impatient and successfully distracted from her search for the oblong box – admittedly, it would have taken longer if she hadn't grown impatient with Sharpay's lack of words – Gabriella stood up and walked over to her friend.

"Gabriella, you have a letter."

Gabriella, who had stood up to walk over to her friend, raised an eyebrow. "Obviously, I live here and we get mail, do you want some tea?"

Sharpay, who had been staring at the envelope she was holding with a strange expression, looked up to meet the petite brunettes gaze.

"What?"

"Tea. It's the stuff we drink when we run out of coffee. You know the stuff we bought just in case your parents decided to pay a visit?"

"Oh, uh," Sharpay glanced down at the letter, her eyes zeroing in on the sending address before deciding that maybe it was best for Gabriella to be sitting when she gave her this. "Sure, I'll make it."

Gabriella raised her eyebrows at Sharpay's tone, moving to follow the blonde to the kitchen when Sharpay stopped and turned around, pulling the letter from her back pocket and biting her lip before speaking.

"Gabi, I think you really need to see this letter."

"Uh, why? It's probably just from mom or one of my cousins." The look on Sharpay's face as she spoke caused Gabriella's stomach to flip unpleasantly, as if there was much more to that letter than a family check-up.

"It's not, Gabi. It's _really_ not from anyone in your family."

It took a moment for Gabriella to realize what Sharpay was implying. When it clicked, Gabriella's eyes widened and she stumbled backwards, away from her friend and the letter she was holding.

"No. Uh-uh, no way. He wouldn't – I wouldn't – he _hates_ me." She stammered taking three more steps backwards and feeling panic that had only dissipated a few minutes before, well again as she tried to think of what that letter Sharpay was holding could possibly mean.

"He doesn't hate you. But he did and you will." Sharpay spoke soothingly, taking a step toward Gabriella, whose blood had drained from her face as Sharpay held out the letter and waited patiently for Gabriella to take it from her.

Tentatively, as if the letter was going to burst into flame if she touched it, Gabriella reached out to take the letter offered to her.

"You don't think it's a Howler, do you?" the minute Gabriella grasped the letter, the words fell from her mouth and she could only be grateful that Sharpay was the one that she said them too.

"Did you seriously just make a Harry Potter reference because of that letter?" Sharpay asked incredulously, staring at her best friend and wondering what on earth had driven Gabriella's mind to ask such a stupid question.

Gabriella shrugged. "Yes. What if it's not a Howler but like the non-magical equivalent of one? Like a letter written in big, bold block letters that spell out how much he hates me and how much he wishes he had never met me and how much he wishes he never - " her breath hitched slightly as she struggled to say the last sentence. "How much he wishes he never proposed to me."

Sharpay's brow furrowed in worry at her friends tone and the blonde winced slightly when Gabriella's hand drifted up to catch the Tanzanite ring that hung on a chain around her neck and her friend clutched onto it for dear life, as if it was the only thing holding her afloat in this entire thing.

"Hey, he doesn't hate you. He could never hate you, he spent nine years loving you – "

"And chasing after me every time I was too afraid to say what I wanted so badly to say!" Gabriella burst out, cutting off her friend and crumpling the envelope. "He spent nine years coming after me, showing me with every move he took that he cared, that he loved me. Every girl wants that stupid grand gesture and Troy gave it to me every time he came looking for me. And you know what I did? I walked out. I left him all alone because of an argument I can't even remember!"

Sharpay reacted quickly to her friend's outburst, stepping over and wrapping her arm around Gabriella's shoulders, steering her over to the couch so they could sit down.

"What's brought this on? Huh? Gabi, you were fine about mentioning him a couple of days ago, now what's this? You're panicking and I've never seen you react like this." Sharpay asked, concerned as she smoothed some hair away from Gabriella's face. "Honey, it's just a letter."

"No, Sharpay, it's _not_ just a letter." Gabriella shook her head violently. "It's not just a letter. I left the stupid box in the apartment. I left it in the apartment and he found my letters. Every single letter I've written to him since we started this whole damn thing. Including my last letter, oh God, my last letter to him."

Sharpay decided to use the acting skills the higher powers had been kind enough to grant her and the high school drama program had honed and had adopted a sympathetic, yet confused face as she rubbed Gabriella's arms.

"What are you talking about, sweetie? I've never heard you mention letters."

"That's because they're letters I wrote to Troy when something happened between us that I couldn't just handle. They're letters that explain everything I was feeling and how worried I was about him or how scared I was of him or how frustrated I was with him and the way he always seemed to act around me. Remember when I came back after that second summer with him? How I walked in the door and couldn't handle being without him? I wrote a letter about that." Gabriella explained, her head falling into her hands and a sob tickling the back of her throat.

"So, you're saying he found them?" Sharpay asked, trying not to sound too dense but knowing she failed when Gabriella nodded miserably.

"Yes. And now he's writing to me as a way to…I don't know, but it's Troy. He's probably writing to prove a point to me. That we both can write letters but he's brave enough to send them." Gabriella said and Sharpay glanced at the letter her friend was clutching in her hand.

"That's brilliant." She muttered.

"What?"

Gabriella looked up and Sharpay shook her head sharply, trying to ignore the glitter of tears in her eyes.

"Nothing. Look, Gabriella you can assume that he's writing to you because he wants to prove a point or you can hope that he's writing to you because he wants you back. Either way, you're not going to know until you open the letter, are you?" Sharpay asked and Gabriella bit her lip at Sharpay's words.

Carefully, she smoothed out the envelope and stared at the achingly familiar scrawl. His handwriting was messy but legible and there was a painful tug in her stomach as she read the Miss at the beginning of her name. Pushing away the implications of the tug, she took a breath, deciding that Sharpay was right.

Turning over the envelope, she slid a hand under the flap and began to open the envelope. Biting her lip, and with an encouraging look from Sharpay, she pulled out two sheets of paper and nearly sobbed when she read the first line.

_Dear Brie, _

* * *

"Troy, I'm hungry."

"No, you're a child." Troy managed to get out through clenched teeth as he tightened his grip on the steering wheels of Chad's Jag and any sense of pride he had in beating his friend at both basketball and tennis faded as, for the fiftieth time since they had left San Francisco, Chad complained of hunger pangs.

"I'm not a child!" Chad sounded indignant through the pleased smirk he wore and Troy glared at him, gunning the engine and swinging into the fast lane as he overtook a car. "Hey, go easy on her! She's brand new!"

"You're car's a she?"

"Don't, Troy Bolton. Just accept that your driving a car that is as precious to me as the life my mother gave me when she pu –"

"I know how babies are born, Chad!" Troy interrupted when he picked up on his friend's analogy and quickly shut it down before his mental image of Chad's mother was ruined for the rest of his life.

"Well then understand that while this beautiful machine was _not_ born the way we were, it's still as precious as a newborn child. A newborn _girl_ child."

Troy raised an eyebrow at Chad's words and then simply changed gear and shot around another car, reveling in the power of the 2009 Jaguar XF and quietly deciding that maybe it was time for him to get a new car. He loved his Audi, he really did, but the Jag was driving so much more smoothly than his car besides, he figured he was allowed to splurge on something for himself.

He chose to ignore the look Chad sent him as he set cruise control and leaned back in his seat, taking a calming breath as he realized that she would have gotten the first letter by now. He wondered how long it had taken her to realize that box had gone missing, it had only really been a few weeks since he had received the box from Sharpay and he had a feeling that the box was something which Gabriella wouldn't misplace or not ever have any idea where she would have placed it.

He wondered, as he wound down the window and settled his elbow on the edge, whether she realized just how much of herself was in those letters. All of them, though he hadn't read the last letter, had something so important to who she was within the words she'd written to him that he was already adding the layer she'd exposed through the letters to the woman he'd thought he'd know so well.

How had it been possible for him to never see how much she had sacrificed for him and how much it had hurt her? He'd never thought about what she'd sacrificed, never thought that she'd gone through something as bad, if not worse, then what he had before he'd had enough of the dance they'd engaged in since he was nineteen.

He'd sacrificed a normal life and she had sacrificed what he would consider a healthy relationship with someone who wasn't afraid to tell her how much he loved her or show her how much he loved her, for that matter. Instead, she'd stuck it out for someone who appeared and disappeared from her life whenever it was convenient for him and if that thought circled his head again, he was going to damage something, Troy thought in frustration.

To clear his mind and knowing that Chad would help him, Troy blinkered into the fast lane and gunned the engine of the Jag, giving only a fleeting thought to highway patrol before associating it with the patrolmen from 'Super Troopers'.

"Dude! Baby, life, mothers, _mine_!" Chad's terrified shout had Troy swallowing a burst of laughter as he changed gears and continued to press on the accelerator until he glanced over to his best friend and burst into laughter at the look on Chad's face.

He'd never seen his friend look…constipated, he thought as he recognized a mixture of horror, worry and exhilaration painted all over his friends face leaving an expression that Troy could only really describe as constipated. Out of pity, despite wishing for a camera so he could capture Chad's horror, Troy downshifted and pulled back into the slow lane, deciding maybe he should obey the speed limit despite the beautiful sound the car made when he opened it up.

"Hey, McDonalds."

And we're back to the hunger, Troy thought wryly as Chad's expression went from constipated to excitement as he spotted the sign. Knowing that there was no way he would avoid complaint if they drove past the McDonalds without stopping.

"Fine, because you're just a big child." Troy muttered and chose to ignore the glare Chad shot him as he guided the car of the freeway.

Fifteen minutes later, Troy chose to watch in something like amusement as Chad shoveled super sized fries into his mouth before gulping down some coke. Taking a sip of his coffee, having opted out of Chad's fast food fest for his vice and his determination to avoid an extra long run in the morning, Troy tapped the mug carefully before leaning forward when he was sure that Chad wouldn't spray him with food if he spoke.

"So, we are going to San Jose for Gabriella." Troy decided that was the easiest thing to start with and then regretted saying anything when Chad began to choke. "Swallow, dude, _swallow_." Troy snapped leaning over to thump Chad on his back.

"Sorry, sorry." Chad coughed before leaning back. "Gabriella, seriously? You're driving my _Jaguar XF_ like a mad man on pseudoephedrine to go see a girl who dumped you six months ago?"

"Pseudoephedrine? Seriously, Chad? You know what that is?"

"Sure, watched that episode of 'Glee' the other day," Chad shrugged, dipping some chips into sauce before thinking about what he'd just said. "With, uh, a girl who likes the show. Odd girl, good body, but odd." Troy raised an eyebrow at Chad's cover-up before shaking his head.

"Whatever. And yes, we're driving your Jaguar to San Jose for the woman I've been involved with for nine years and never told her that…well, how much I love her and, well, dude, look, we're driving to San Jose for Gabriella, can we just leave it at that?" Feeling suddenly uncomfortable at telling Chad something they would both consider mushy, Troy took a large sip of coffee and forced himself to ignore the expression on Chad's face.

Demolishing half a burger with one bite, Chad raised his eyebrows. "Okay, she knows we're coming though right?"

"Nope."

"_What_?"

Holding up a hand in defense, Troy put down his coffee. "Well, I have a plan."

"A plan? You have a plan? After nine years, you've finally decided to formulate a plan?" Chad spat out, leaning back and staring at his friend incredulously, as if trying to figure out what was going through his best friends head.

"Yep. And the plan starts with this."

Lifting himself up a little, Troy dug a hand in his back pocket before slapping two folded sheets of paper on the table between them, being careful to avoid the greasy food Chad was devouring.

"What's this?" Chad asked suspiciously, putting down his burger and wiping his hands on a napkin before picking up the paper.

"Read it." Troy replied, taking another sip of coffee.

Chad raised an eyebrow before unfolding the pieces of paper and beginning to read.

* * *

_Dear Brie,_

_I'm not good at this, I'm not good at telling people what they need to hear or making them understand that I know how much they've all sacrificed for me and for what I love to do over the years that you've known me. _

_But I'll tell you what I remember of the summer we spent together on Sturgeon Bay. I remember the first time I met you, I was exhausted, and coach had run me around pretty good and all I could think about was a bed and how nice it was going to be to just sleep. You were standing behind you parents and I wasn't too tired to remember I thought you were hot. Not very eloquent, but I really do remember thinking you were hot, really hot. _

_I don't think I even heard you speak that night; I just kind of nodded and then headed upstairs to claim a room that didn't have stuff in it. I'm pretty sure you weren't impressed with me and my actions, neither were your parents, your dad kind of glared at me when I came down from breakfast and I think he muttered something about being worked hard wasn't an excuse for being rude. To be fair, your dad didn't know that I'd turned pro and it was kind of essential to work me to the point where I couldn't feel a bone in my body. _

_The first time I really looked at you was when we sat outside on the back porch, talking and you became animated about something, I don't really remember what you were talking about, I wasn't really great with the whole listening thing back then, I don't think I'm too great with it now. I just remember the way you looked, all innocent beauty, you had your hair pulled over one shoulder and your hands were flying everywhere – did you ever notice that when you talk excitedly your hands kind of go all over the place? – and you were smiling. That soft smile, the one you only ever wear when you're talking about something you love._

_Do you know what I thought when I looked at you? I thought you were beautiful. I thought you were absolutely, unbelievably beautiful. _

_I've thought you were beautiful a time or two after that – that one night when we lay under the stars on that secluded beach by the bay, I remember telling you how beautiful you were – but I just remember the way you looked, the way the sinking sun made your hair shine and the way you smiled that smile. _

_That smile's made you get your way more often than I think you know, you know. Remember the exhibition at the British Museum on Ancient Rome or something? How you got so excited when we you found out it was on and how, even though I'd booked the court to train on for a few hours that day, I called a car and I allowed you to drag me through the museum for the entire day. I'll admit that it wasn't as bad as I thought it was but that's not the point, the point is when you were going on about it, you were wearing that smile and all I could think about was that afternoon where I sort of listened to you talk and the first time I ever saw that smile. _

_There was a lot of firsts that summer, if I'm remembering it right. It was the first time you'd ever really looked at a guy, the first time I'd ever been with a girl that allowed me to be normal, the first time we fell in love with each other. _

_I fell in love with you that summer, Gabriella. I fell in love with the girl who could ramble on about history but knew when to be totally silent. I fell in love with the girl who didn't understand the steps to a relationship and the girl who looked at me with so much innocence, even after we'd done something decidedly not innocent. _

_I __did__ fall in love with you that summer, Gabriella. You have no idea how badly it hurt to leave and go to Washington, I'd never realized that there could be more to my life than the next point, the next set, the next match, the next tournament. You showed me a glimpse of that life when I was nineteen and just about to prove myself to the world and I didn't know how to handle that glimpse anymore than I knew how to handle you, in any manner you came to me over the years. _

_I'm not good at this because I can only recall you smile that summer and the fact that I loved you back then. I loved you in a way that wasn't puppy love, but wasn't quite what we created in the following years. _

_I love you now, too, Brie._

_Please don't ever forget that I love you now. _

_Troy._

* * *

"Sharpay?"

The blonde, who had been reading the letter, wrinkling her nose slightly at the shortness of the letter, turned her attention to Gabriella. Who was staring at the second last sentence, tearstains glistening on her cheeks.

"Yes?"

"He really loves me, doesn't he?" She whispered and Sharpay instantly wrapped her arm around Gabriella's shoulders, squeezing tightly.

"It looks that way." She replied quietly and Gabriella sniffled as a few more tears fell.

"I love him, too. Even after everything."

Sharpay felt her heart break slightly as Gabriella murmured the words. It broke as she heard Gabriella's own heart break as she uttered the words.

* * *

A/N: Okay. Sorry, once more because I am.

Now, I hope you liked the chapter because I wrote it without a song in mind and then 'The Other Side of the Door' just seemed to fit Gabriella's thought pattern so well, I thought well there you go, I did write it with a song in mind. Anyway, how was the change? Do we all want to know what Troy's up to? What the plan is? And why on earth he would actually bring Chad with him?

I hope so. I hope Gabriella was believable as well. Her actions and her thoughts about him and why she won't go back. Anyway, I hope you enjoyed and I promise to update quicker than three months at any rate.

I am really, really, sorry, once again, guys, I mean it.


	11. Chapter 11: Forever and Always

Disclaimer: I do not own 'High School Musical' or any related characters nor do I own Taylor Swift's lyrics.

A/N: I am sorry, again. Really. This work thing got in the way and then I rewrote the entire chapter eleven that I had written because it didn't fit into what I wanted for this story and...I know that excuses aren't exactly what you're all looking for, but I am so sorry! I can't believe life has just gotten so hectic lately! I am so sorry for the lack of updates, everyone, truly.

I hope you enjoy this next chapter and I'll try and get the next one up ASAP.

* * *

_**The Letters Never Read**_

**Chapter Eleven: Forever and Always  
**

_Oh, I stare at the phone,_

_He still hasn't called  
And then you feel so low _

_You can't feel nothing at all  
And you flashback to when we said _

_Forever and always_

_Forever and Always – Taylor Swift_

_San Jose, California – August 2008_

Gabriella was beginning to worry. The tanzanite ring on her finger was beginning to feel too heavy. The tightness in her chest was beginning to suffocate her in a way she hadn't felt in two years.

The phone hadn't made a sound in a little over a month.

_He wasn't going to call. _The thought, whispered once in sad warning as she'd stormed from their apartment, took on strength as Gabriella gazed at the phone she so desperately wished would play Regina Spektor's '_Eet_'.

Except wishing hadn't changed the fact that in a little over a month, she hadn't heard the song. She had skipped it every time her i-pod had started to play it and she hadn't heard it from her phone because it was Troy's ring tone. She'd set it to be his ring tone when she'd discovered that it was one of the most played songs on his i-pod, a soft song discovered amongst AC/DC, Eminem and Matchbox Twenty.

When she'd found it, she'd wanted to tease him about it, torment him for having a song that was so different from 'Thunderstruck' and she had until he'd looked her in the eye and told her sometimes he forgot the words to his favourite song. There had been so much more meaning behind those words and Gabriella could remember falling silent at the words and his tone.

It reminded her that sometimes she forgot she didn't know him as well as she thought she did.

And hadn't that been part of the problem? Gabriella asked herself as she stared at the phone sitting on the kitchen counter. After all they'd been through, hadn't not knowing him well enough become part of the problem? She could remember knowing him inside out during the summer that had started it all and she could even remember knowing him better at a time when he was more volatile then untouchable.

But that had changed. Gabriella could remember it had changed when she'd touched him and found that he'd constructed a wall that couldn't be breached. She'd touched him two years ago and found herself seeing a man that she did not know.

At first, she'd assumed that he had constructed Troy Bolton as a way of stopping her from getting close. She had assumed Troy Bolton was a persona that helped him get through the day when he was surrounded by people who wanted every little piece of him the moment he stepped off the court after a match. She had assumed the old Troy was hiding behind Troy Bolton and he would come out when she needed him most.

Only Troy Bolton and the Troy she'd known had become one person in the time after she'd left him at Wimbledon. Troy had become someone different to the Troy who had left Sturgeon Bay for Washington, the Troy who had left a note promising her that they would be together one day; the Troy who had agreed that later was a better time to talk because it was their time.

Troy Bolton had, Gabriella had discovered over the past ten months, intertwined with Troy until she was faced with a man who knew every single, intricate part of her but who she felt she didn't know.

And because she felt she didn't know him, she wished she had let him talk on that rainy night ten months ago.

If she had let him talk, let him tell her what he'd wanted to tell her and found that he was different, would she be sitting in her new kitchen waiting for her phone to call?

She highly doubted it.

And because she highly doubted it, she knew that the blame was not entirely his.

If she had recognized that she knew only a part of him the minute he had opened his mouth to tell her it was time ten months ago, she wouldn't have thrown herself into a relationship that had become more and more complicated as life had gone on. If she had known that he was different to her memory as both a man and the man who loved her, would she still have expected the world to change when he said it was time for their forever and always?

She found that the terrifying answer was yes. She would have expected their forever and always. She would have expected it from him because she loved both Troy and Troy Bolton and she knew, somehow, that she also loved the man who had come to her apartment to offer her everything on that rainy night.

She loved him and she didn't even know him.

"You know, staring at the phone isn't going to make it ring."

Gabriella jerked at the sound of Sharpay's soft voice and she spun in her chair to meet her friend's sympathetic gaze.

"I wasn't. I mean…well…there's no point in pretending I wasn't is there?" Gabriella asked resignedly when all Sharpay did was raise an eyebrow at her attempt at denial.

Letting out a sigh, Sharpay shook her head and sat down next to her friend. "It's been a month Gabi," she pointed out gently. "If he wanted to talk, don't you think he would have called already?"

Gabriella was silent for a moment as she thought about Sharpay's question. Would he have called? She wondered. She'd assumed he would come after her, ranting and raging and fighting her decision to leave. She hadn't thought he wouldn't call after she stormed out.

But then again, she knew that she didn't know this Troy as well as she thought she did.

"I don't know, Shar. I thought that he would wait a week and then come charging after me. I figured that he would argue his way back into a relationship. But I guess I didn't know him as well as I thought I did." Gabriella said with a sigh and Sharpay shifted closer to slide her arm around her friend's shoulders.

"So, if you're thinking this, why are staring at the phone?"

"Because he hasn't called, Sharpay. Because even though I know he probably won't call at least I feel _something_ when I stare at the phone." Gabriella's voice thickened as she spoke and she felt tears threaten. "Because he promised me forever and always." Gabriella's voice broke at the words and she laid her head on the table.

"Okay, sweetie. Forget I asked." Sharpay spoke soothingly, her hand beginning to massage circles on Gabriella's back as tears slipped down her face.

Gabriella shook her head as she sniffled slightly. Raising her head slightly, she stared at the silver object she desperately wished would start playing '_Eet_' and said something that made her feel so much more than anything she had said since she had left him.

"I'm staring at the phone even though he hasn't called in a month, Sharpay, because I still want that forever and always."

* * *

_San Jose, California – 2009_

Gabriella opened her eyes and couldn't stop the feeling of desolation wash over her as the last of the dream was pulled from her mind by the sun that fell across her face.

She'd stared at the goddamn phone for two months. Two whole months of waiting for him to call and breaking every time someone pointed out he wasn't going to.

Until the day she had become so enraged by the very thought of a forever and always with Troy, by the thought of what she had been reduced to her in the wake of that one fight, she had thrown it across the room and watched as the phone had shattered against a kitchen cupboard.

She could remember the way she had sunk to the floor as she watched the shattered phone pieces fall and she remembered the way she had wrapped her arms around her knees and held on as she cried. It had hurt, she'd discovered, it had hurt so badly to destroy the last of the hope she'd held onto in a rush of anger at everything their relationship had turned into.

She'd especially despised the fact that she'd sat in the kitchen she shared with Sharpay and stared at her phone for two months and prayed that she would hear that song start to play.

She'd always thought that she was stronger than that. She'd always figured that she would have to have been stronger; she'd managed to breathe without him, hadn't she? She'd managed to accept that she couldn't touch him when he was Troy Bolton, hadn't she? She'd survived him leaving her time and time again, hadn't she?

Yes, she answered firmly, she'd survived all of that but she'd always known he was going to come after her and remind her that their forever and always was coming.

Except this time. This time he hadn't called. This time he hadn't shown up on her doorstep a week after a fight. This time, she hadn't heard anything from him until yesterday.

This time she frightened that she was going to stare at the mailbox waiting for the postman to arrive with another letter. And this time, she was more frightened of not receiving a letter than receiving one.

"Well, what a revelation, Gabriella." Her quiet voice disturbed the still air and she sighed as she sat up.

She was more frightened of not hearing from him after receiving a letter out of the blue, six months after the collapse of their engagement then reading what the letter had to say and she couldn't, for the life of her, figure out if that was the most screwed up part about it all.

Throwing back her covers, Gabriella swung her legs over the side of her bed and found herself staring at the floor. Would there be another letter? She suddenly wondered. What if that last letter was simply his goodbye? His was of telling her that it was over for good? That they were never going to get their forever and always?

As the questions swirled around in her head, for the first time ever, Gabriella wished her brain would just _stop_. She'd had enough of questioning everything since she'd walked out of their apartment. She'd had enough of trying to figure out if she'd done the right thing or if she should have been the one to call him.

For the first time in her life, she didn't want to over analyse what he was doing or why Troy was doing it. She wanted to read the letter he may or may not sent for her to read today and she wanted to just accept whatever it was that she was feeling as she read it.

"Oh, forget this."

Even as she muttered the words aloud, Gabriella stood and grabbed her bathrobe. Shrugging it on, she headed out of her bedroom and towards the kitchen where she'd sat and stared at her phone for two months.

Stepping into it, she raised her eyebrows at Sharpay when she was greeted with the sight of her friend leaning over their sink and staring out the kitchen window at something on the opposite side of the street.

"Um. Good morning. Are the neighbours doing something they shouldn't be doing?" Gabriella found herself amused – despite her inner turmoil – at the sight of Sharpay doing something so utterly _nuts_ that made her the person she was.

"What?" Whirling around, Sharpay met Gabriella's gaze, guiltily Gabriella thought as Sharpay shifted to block the window with her body. "Oh, no. Those neighbours moved out ages ago. I thought I told you that."

"Mmm-hmm."

Moving over to the kettle, Gabriella turned it flicked the switch to make it boil and then reached for a mug to make her tea in.

"So, you're not going to school today?"

Sharpay didn't move from the window as Gabriella concentrated on spooning sugar into her mug and shook her head.

"No. I don't think it'd be fair on my students if I tried to teach them something when all I'm thinking about is Troy."

"Yeah. Are you okay, today?" Sharpay asked carefully, remembering the way her friend had broken the day before after reading Troy's letter.

Gabriella, hearing the kettle reach boiling point, sighed as she turned to pour hot water over the teabag and sugar.

"I don't know, Shar. I just – I didn't mean to cry last night, anymore than I meant to tell you how much I still love him." Wandering over to the fridge, Gabriella opened it and pulled out the milk. "I want another letter from him, Sharpay. Just to see what he says about something else that's happened. Maybe just to hear from him, too."

Instead of being shocked, the way Gabriella had anticipated her friend to be, Sharpay shrugged and nodded, folding her arms and leaning back against the counter, still blocking what she was staring at from Gabriella's view.

"That's understandable, though. I mean, you haven't heard from him in six months and I think you need to hear what he has to say about your relationship up until now. Except – " Sharpay cut herself off sharply and Gabriella found that her curiosity was piqued at the uncomfortable expression on the blonde's face.

"Except what?" She asked, adding milk to her tea and stirring it through thoroughly before lifting the mug to her lips.

"Except nothing. It doesn't matter."

Brushing it off sharply, Sharpay waved her hand dismissively and fixed a painful smile on her face as Gabriella observed her over the rim of her mug.

"Sharpay, tell me. I'm pretty sure it can't be that bad."

Coughing nervously, Sharpay shook her head. "No, you don't need to hear it."

"Sharpay, I have been going over everything in my head since I received that letter yesterday. I have questioned every single move I ever made with Troy and I have questioned every single thought I've had since leaving him. I've even asked myself why I sat at in the kitchen every day for two months; waiting for 'Eet' to play because I knew it would mean that Troy was calling me. There's nothing that you can say, that won't make me feel worse than I'm already feeling."

Though it was delivered matter-of-factly, Gabriella couldn't help but feel her stomach twist as she told Sharpay what she was thinking. The blonde, she noticed, seemed to freeze at Gabriella's words, as if she hadn't been expecting them.

And why should she? Gabriella asked. She'd refused to talk about it when she'd shown up at Sharpay's house, hair wet from rain and cheeks soaked from tears that wouldn't stop. She'd refused to talk about it whenever Sharpay had caught her fiddling with the engagement ring he'd given her. And she'd most certainly refused to talk about it when she'd accepted the job working at a local high school in San Jose and had asked her to move in with her.

She just hadn't talked about it at all.

"Okay then. If you're sure." Sharpay said quietly, after a moment of silence. "Except what if you don't want to hear what he has to say? You're stubborn, Gabriella. More stubborn than I ever gave you credit for. What if he says something that you don't want to hear? What if he gives you a reason for it all and you simply don't want to accept that it could be that easy? You said it yourself last night, Troy's chased you every time you're relationship has crashed to a stop. What if you hear what he has to say and he says that this time, the stops permanent?"

Gabriella froze at Sharpays words. She froze at the thought she'd entertained but always rejected. Most of all, she froze at the thought of Troy denying her their life together because of a fight that should have let everything out and instead tore them apart.

Sharpay watched her for a moment before sighing. "There's the mail. I'll get it."

Before she could move towards the door, Gabriella shook her head.

"No. No. Let me get it." Setting down her mug, Gabriella headed outside, her mind whirling with the thought of Troy ending it for good by explaining his side of the relationship.

As she head towards their mailbox, she didn't see the sleek, black car sitting on the curb, looking out of place in a middle class neighbourhood. Instead, she opened the mail box and pulled out the letters, her stomach filling with dread as she slowly began to flip through the bundle, searching for the letter she was frightened wouldn't be there.

Her hand froze on the last letter and she swallowed hard as she gazed at his scrawl and her new address.

With shaking fingers, frightened now of what he could possibly say now, Gabriella flipped over the envelope and tore it open. Yanking out the pages, she took a breath and started reading.

* * *

_Dear Brie, _

_ I can't do this in order. I hope you don't expect me to. Because to write you letters in the order that I read them in would be painful. For both you and me. Besides, for all I know, you won't want to read this letter. You might not have even read the last one. _

_ Still, I have to try._

_ You left. _

_ Not just six months ago, when you stormed out after an argument that I'm still trying to figure out. But you left, in England when I needed you to fight for it. _

_ I know now how selfish I was when you finally left me at Wimbledon in 2006. I get that I gave you the impression that I didn't want you to fight for our relationship, that I didn't want you to yell and scream and tell me that you loved me and weren't going to leave. I understand that for those impressions I probably hurt you more than I've ever hurt anybody in my life and I know that I'm sorry that I let you leave thinking I was cold and untouchable and that I didn't want what you want._

_ Because Gabriella, damn it, I wanted it as much as you did. _

_ I know this might be too little, too late. Especially if you ever look back on that part of your life and see exactly what I put you through during that time. But you need to know that I wanted it too. _

_ You need to know that I couldn't breathe without you as well._

_ God, do you know I got drunk after I watched you get on the plane without a word to me? Jay had to pick me up off my ass when he found me and after I'd spewed out everything I was feeling when I watched you get on that plane that was going to take you away from me._

_ I was like that the night after I figured out you weren't coming back. I got drunk except this time it was Chad who picked me up and listened – not that helpfully, might I add – as I tried to explain to him why breathing without you was going to be so hard. _

_ Breathing without you is always going to be hard, Brie. Trying to explain to you – or anyone – that I wanted everything you wanted just as much as you did is hard. _

_ Trying to explain to everyone that I want you back, in my life, for the forever and always I promised you when I asked you to marry me, is possibly the hardest thing I've ever done in my life._

_ I need you to know that I still want that forever and always with you, Brie. Just you. _

_ I need you to know that, in the middle of the night, when I know I should be sleeping, I want you to be the one to come outside and touch me because every time you did, I always breathed a little more easy and I slept so much better. _

_ I need you to know that even though I know that you think that I'm different because I had to change to accommodate my surroundings. I'm not that different. _

_ I still need you around. I still need you to touch me when I'm wound to tightly. I still need you to smile that smile at me because I've done something right for a change. I still need you to lecture me on not pushing myself to hard because you're worried. I still need you to help me breathe, 'cause its always going to be a little bit to hard when you're not around._

_ I still need __you__ because I want that forever and always with you. _

_ I hope you believe that. _

_ I hope you remember that I love you, whether or not I'm Troy Bolton or Troy. _

_ I need you to remember that. _

_ I love you._

_ Troy_

_

* * *

_Troy watched from his car as Gabriella raised a hand to wipe viciously at her cheeks as she read his second letter and felt his heart tear slightly as she clutched the letter to her chest to pivot on her heel and enter the house.

Letting out a quite breath as the front door to her house shut, Troy let his head fall to the steering wheel and let loose a stream of vicious curses that were aimed solely at himself.

She'd looked so _frail_.

When she'd stepped from the house, he'd jolted. It was the first time he'd seen her in six months and his mouth had gone dry as he'd greedily drunk in every single detail he'd missed about her.

Then he'd noticed how thin she'd become. How tired she looked. And he had felt his stomach clench.

He knew that when she was stressed she chose not to eat. He _knew _that. But he also knew she'd taken it to a different level. While her bones weren't visibly obvious, Troy could see that she hadn't been eating by how thin her legs were. How bony her wrists seemed to be. She was bordering on being too thin and he felt worry gnaw.

But that hadn't been what had made her so frail. The exhaustion shown in the bruised shadows under eyes hadn't made her seem frail either.

The unhappiness was what did.

How had he wallowed so badly he hadn't given a thought to how unhappy she would be? How had he thought that by her leaving him, she would be happier? How had he thought that by not calling her, by not following her to wherever the hell she had gone would make her happier than she had left?

Even though Troy understood that he was not solely to blame, he hit the steering wheel anyway.

He hit it again because of how frail she looked when she'd always been the stronger one.

He hit it because he wanted to screw the plan and sweep her up in his arms.

He hit it because he was furious that their story wasn't going to end as smoothly as they'd both hoped.

He hit it because he'd been so blinded by what he'd felt that he hadn't chased after her sooner and now he was afraid she wouldn't accept what he was saying.

He hit it once more because their forever and always seemed so damn far away because of all the things never said and wrong decisions made at the right time.

* * *

A/N: Okay, so how was that chapter? I felt sorry for Troy. Kind of anyway. Anyway, I hope you enjoyed it and I am so sorry about not updating sooner!


	12. Chapter 12: Taking the Very Best

Disclaimer: I do not own 'High School Musical' or any related characters nor do I own Taylor Swift's lyrics.

A/N: Okay, so I know it's been a while but well...life got in the way. Unfortunately, it happens. I am sorry it's taken me so long to get this chapter up, but everything's kind of been piling up with my job and I had to make sure I was concentrating on that before this and I'm sorry that it took me this long to pull this story back up on my priorities list. So I am sorry.

In saying that, I do hope you enjoy this chapter. Even if it does seem a little - a lot, actually - disjointed to me.

* * *

_**The Letters Never Read**_

**Chapter Twelve: Taking the Very Best  
**

_You have a way of coming easily to me  
And when you take, you take the very best of me  
So I start a fight cause I need to feel something  
_

_Cold As You – Taylor Swift_

_June 2004 – Albuquerque, New Mexico_

Gabriella was curled up on the sofa, under a warm blanket, her mind a million miles away from the movie she was watching.

Troy was back.

He'd walked in on her on a date with a man that was nothing like him – a safe bet on her part – and the look in his eyes had made her feel like she was betraying him and everything they were together. But it was worse, much, much worse when the look had simply disappeared and a single minded determination had taken residence on his face.

She still couldn't believe that David had turned into a simpering fool when he'd stopped at their table wearing a grin that melted hearts and razor sharp look of calculation.

But then again, she reflected, that's what Troy did. He turned your head inside out until you saw things his way and couldn't think about what it was, exactly, you wanted.

Because he always made her forget what it was she wanted. He made her forget that he had abandoned her in a hotel room two years ago, he made the walls she'd built – walls she believed were impervious to him – crumble with a demand of whether or not he really wanted to be jealous of the fact that she was out with another man and the kind of kiss in the rain that made girls swoon.

But it was the forgetting what she wanted that freaked her out the most. How could she remember to hate him, when he could show up and make her forget with a single look? How could she remember that she'd decided that being around him – with him, in anyway – wasn't even close to what she wanted?

She'd decided after she'd cried herself dry after he'd left for what had felt like the fiftieth time that she wanted a safe, dependable someone. Someone who would never slip easily into her life and then walk away taking a little bit of everything she thought of as the best of her.

That's what he did, too, Gabriella thought. He just took without knowing. When he left for Washington that first time, she'd thought she was going to break in half every time someone mentioned the brilliant new tennis star on the rise. When he'd called from Barcelona – a guess based on the memorization of the ATP World Tour Schedule – she'd held the phone to her forehead for what felt like forever after he'd hung up. He hadn't even said ten words, she remembered. And still he had taken more from her than she had even wanted to give. Then there was that damn night in the hotel room. That damn night when she would have readily given him everything he wanted, when she would have readily entered in a relationship that would have destroyed her.

A relationship, she knew now, she wouldn't have been able to handle. What twenty year old girl on the brink of womanhood could handle a relationship with a rapidly rising tennis star? Especially one who looked the way Troy did?

What twenty year old girl on the brink of womanhood could handle losing whatever it was he took every time he left her?

"Brie? You decent?"

Jerking upright, Gabriella felt the shoulder of her jumper slide down as she whipped her head around and met Troy's gaze as he walked into her living room, hands shoved into the pockets of jeans so worn they were white at the seams, a white shirt straining over his muscles as their eyes met.

"Hi. Um," Disorientated for a minute, Gabriella glanced at the film still playing before looking back at Troy and refocusing on his face. "Wait, what are you doing here?"

"Can you come with me?" He asked, ignoring her question and looking incredibly uncomfortable.

Raising a quizzical brow at his question, Gabriella scrambled up from the couch, yanking the shoulder of her oversized jumper back up.

"Why?"

He blew out a breath and shook his head. "Look, can you just, like, come? Please?"

Frowning and pulling up a leg of her black tights, Gabriella searched the floor for her flats as Troy looked around the living room uncomfortably before his eyes focused on the television screen and he smirked a little.

"You know what? This is a good film." He said suddenly.

"What film?" Gabriella asked distractedly, her mind on pulling her flat on without wincing at how tight the new shoes were.

"_Wimbledon_. I watched it on a plane heading for Wimbledon, actually. It's really funny."

Screwing up her face, Gabriella winced before heading over to him. "I wouldn't think that it was your type of movie."

"Why not? It's a film about tennis. I like tennis. And Kirsten Dunst is hell hot in this film. I wouldn't have thought it was your type of film."

Snorting, Gabriella wrapped her arms around herself and walked over to him, ignoring the film that was playing as she focused on him.

"Why not? Watching it gives me tips on how to handle the love game." Glancing up at him, she noted the look on his face and then cleared her throat. "Okay, where are we going?"

Instead of replying, Troy turned on his heel and headed out, giving Gabriella the impression that she was to follow. With a roll of her eyes, she followed him, her arms still wrapped around herself.

Gabriella wasn't sure where she was going as she followed Troy out of her house and down her street. She wasn't exactly sure where he was taking her and she wasn't exactly sure she wanted to get there when they stopped.

She knew what was going to happen. He was going to tell her that he was leaving town tomorrow. He was going to tell her that everything he had said the other morning – everything about how they needed to be friends before they were anything else – wasn't something she should believe in…and that piece of her that believed in him, in those words, was going to be taken with him wherever he goes next.

Looking up, Gabriella only just managed to stop as Troy yanked open the gate to a run down tennis court that she had never seen before in all the time she'd lived in Albuquerque.

"Um…where are we?" She asked dumbly, as he walked to the very centre of the run down court and placed his hand on the worn down net.

"We are on the court where I first realized I wanted to play tennis professionally."

Feeling her face screw up at his words, Gabriella glanced around the court and wondered why he had decided to pursue tennis on a court that looked like it had seen better days twenty, thirty years ago.

"Okay. Why are we here?"

His gaze flew to hers as she asked the question and for a long, long moment he simply watched her through hooded blue eyes that told her everything she needed to know about why he had brought her here.

He was going to leave, she thought numbly. He was actually going to leave and even though he was saying goodbye this time, Gabriella found that she couldn't stand what he was going to do.

"You're leaving again, aren't you?" She snapped out before he could even say anything. "Well, at least you're going to say goodbye, this time 'round."

Gabriella knew her voice was snide, she knew that she'd started talking in order to start a fight because she was terrified of what he was going to take when he said the words.

"Brie. Come on. That's not fair."

She scoffed. "Not fair? God, you show up two days ago and now you're going to leave? How typical. You got what you wanted from me and now you're going to bail. Huh. Doesn't this remind you of - when was it? 2002?"

"Don't." He cut her off harshly before she could even get out the rest of her mouth. "Just don't. You know why we can't go there. So don't. I am leaving. I have to start training. I need to start working my calf otherwise I'll get stiff and I can't miss the US Open if I miss Wimbledon and had to pull out of the French."

And that's how easy it was, Gabriella thought. Tennis let him come easily back into her life and tennis pulled him out of it easily as well. He was going to go and she was going to be left clinging to whatever he didn't take with him when he went.

"Right. And you brought me here to tell me because?"

He shrugged before pulling his hands out of his pockets and rubbing the back of his neck. "Because this place is important to me and you're important to me."

For a moment, she really didn't know how to reply to that. Because for everything that he'd done to her in the past five years, that sentence reminded her of why it hurt _so much_ whenever he chose to walk away with that little piece of her she never wanted to give.

But it wasn't enough. Not for every piece of her he took with him when he left. He had to make it up to her. And he had to start now, when she wanted so badly to start a fight to feel something more than pain for the part she was losing now.

So instead of trying to restart the fight that she so desperately wanted to have with him, she blinked twice and then turned around heading for the gate.

"Brie? Where are you going?" His voice stopped her at the gate and she turned around to face him, her eyes sombre.

"Home. I know I matter, Troy. But I think we need more than a statement about how I matter. Because no matter what, tennis brings you so easily into my life and so easily out of it. And every time it draws you out of my life, a piece of me goes. A piece of the very best of me goes with you." She said with a tremble in her voice and her chin set defiantly.

"Brie - "

"We'll be friends, Troy. The way you wanted us to be. I'll talk to you later. Good luck with your next match."

It didn't matter, she realized as she left. It didn't matter who left first. He still walked away with a piece of the very best of her.

And didn't that just suck.

* * *

_Dear Brie, _

_You weren't the only person that gave away the best part of themselves whenever I left._

_Do you remember when you said that to me? _

_We were standing on the courts where I first realized I wanted to play tennis for life and you told me that tennis helped me come easily into your life and it helped me slide easily out of your life. And when I left, I took a part of the very best of you._

_I need you to know that it wasn't that easy. _

_ I'm not sure if you'll believe me because really, I can understand why you would think that it was all so easy for me to go to you when I was afforded a break in between the tournaments that ruled my life. I always seemed to show up when it was convenient for me to do so and never when it was convenient for you. _

_ Except that time. That time I walked in on you on a date with what-his-name and we exploded all over each other wasn't planned. There was no thought process in going to see you. I'd trained myself to not think of you because I knew that you probably hated me for what I'd done to you in the years before hand. _

_ When I saw you with that guy, Brie, when I saw the way you were smiling at him all I can remember is thinking that every time you smiled at me like that, some part of me was taken from me and given to you. _

_ You're not the only that lost pieces of yourself to someone you didn't want to lose them too. _

_ I spent so long telling myself that I was a whole person. That the girl I couldn't let go of was simply a girl I wanted to hold on to for the sake of normalcy. It never occurred to me until I saw you smiling at the other guy, that the reason I couldn't let you go was because every good piece of me – every piece I'd never realized I had – was within your grasp and I'd left it there whenever I had to leave you. _

_ I was going to tell you that. As strictly a friend thing when I took you to those courts. It was something you needed to know just so you could understand that you weren't the only one that hurt whenever I had to leave. _

_ I'm pretty sure you never actually understood that it hurt me to leave you, too. _

_ It hurt even more when you tried to start a fight so you could start to feel anything but the vacancy I saw when you guessed that I had to go. _

_ I never told you I w

* * *

as leaving with the intention of hurting you. I figured, that time at least, that if I told you I was leaving I wouldn't leave something of me with you. _

_ It didn't work because for months afterwards, I replayed every single word you said to me over and over again just because it was too close to what I was feeling at the time. _

_ I know I left, Brie. Not just that time on courts in Albuquerque and not just the time where I didn't say goodbye. I know I left every single time we needed to work things out and I know how easy it must have looked because tennis could pull me away so quickly._

_ But it wasn't easy. Leaving you wasn't as easy as I must have made it seem. Taking a piece of the very best of you wasn't something I wanted to take with me when I left. Fighting with you before I left wasn't something I wanted either._

_ Leaving a piece of me with you wasn't something I wanted, either._

_ The thing is we still did it, anyway._

_I took a piece of you with me whenever I left and I left a piece of me behind when I walked away._

_It wasn't easy to come into your life and walk out of it with that piece and it wasn't easy knowing you would start a fight because of it._

_I love you. _

_Troy_

_

* * *

__San Jose, California – 2009_

Oh, well, wasn't he a smooth one?

Sharpay shook her head as she put the letter down on the table where Gabriella had left it after reading through it several timesand wondered what the hell it was about that letter that had her friend's eyes going glassy.

She wanted to figure it was because the letter was from Troy and even though she _wanted_ to figure that, she knew that she wasn't even close.

It was hard, Sharpay realized, to try and understand a relationship that was so closed off to the rest of the world.

Gabriella had never been very big on telling her what was happening in her relationship with Troy and the few times she'd met Troy herself, Sharpay had always been left with the impression that there was much, much more to the relationship they both had put on for whoever was watching.

These letters were just proving how much deeper this entire saga ran.

And this letter just proved that the Troy and Gabriella saga had yet to run its full course and reach a happy ending.

It made Sharpay wonder what else he had written to her that had made her look at their relationship with new eyes. Because that's what she'd found Gabriella doing, re-evaluating every thing that they'd been through over the past few years adding his point of view and being frightened by what the new angle to their relationship meant.

God, it must be scary too, Sharpay thought, to have the whole way you looked at a relationship where nothing must seem new shifted simply because for the first time you had uncensored access to the other persons thoughts.

And Troy was being really uncensored too. He was leaving nothing out and Sharpay could only assume that it was because in all Gabriella's letters, her thoughts and feelings were so blatantly honest that he felt he had to repay the favour.

Unless of course he had a plan. Which Sharpay highly doubted considering the past nine years of their relationship. If he hadn't planned anything then, why on earth would he start now?

Frowning a little, Sharpay glanced down at the letter before rising from the table to refill her coffee mug. Glancing at the clock, she smiled a little as the hand ticked over to the eight and the little kitchen clock chimed. She knew she should start getting ready for work; the paper work she'd been neglecting was starting to pile up in her office at the Performing Arts School her and her brother ran but first she needed to make sure Gabriella was okay.

Even as she thought it, Sharpay's gaze drifted from the clock to the window and her frown deepened at the sight that greeted her.

"Huh."

"What's huh?"

Gabriella breezed into the kitchen, looking put together in a way that Sharpay knew had taken her some time. Though her make-up was carefully done, nothing could conceal the crying jag her friend had indulged in during her shower nor could anything conceal the air of frailty that had become more and more fragile as each letter came.

"Nothing. Are you sure you're up for school?"

Sharpay chose to tuck away what she'd seen as Gabriella placed some bread in the toaster and got out butter and marmalade.

The look Gabriella threw her was frustrated and Sharpay didn't really care. Gabriella didn't look like she could handle another letter, let alone a classroom full of obnoxious teenagers who were more likely to prod at every sore spot than leave them alone.

"Yes. I have to go in, Shar or I'll stay here and drive myself mad rereading every single letter." Gabriella grabbed the toast as it popped up and began to butter it. "Besides, I don't think my principle would believe I've been sick for this long. It's bad enough I had to tell him I needed someone to cover my morning lesson because I'm late."

Sharpay took a sip of her coffee and nodded. "Okay then. As long as you're sure and you promise you won't break down in the middle of class like a lunatic."

"Don't worry. If I think I'm going to break down, I'll put on a video about something sad and pretend I'm crying about that."

Though it was a joke, Sharpay found herself eyeing Gabriella carefully as she spoke and knew that her friend only half meant it. Sharpay knew that Gabriella wasn't ready to go back to teaching and she knew that if she even suggested it, Gabriella would dig her heels in so hard Sharpay would be feeling the bump in the head for weeks.

"Alright. Just remember to call if you need me."

Gabriella smiled a little at her words. "I will. Don't worry. I'll be fine. I think. I just…need time to not think about it."

"Uh-huh." Sharpay said into her mug, knowing that when Gabriella felt like talking about this new letter, a newer, more raw emotional scar would surface.

"I have to get going, so I'll see you tonight, alright?"

Deciding that she wasn't going to fight with her now, Sharpay merely nodded as Gabriella grabbed a black tailored blazer and shrugged into it. As her friend waved at her, Sharpay wondered if Gabriella knew just how much trouble she was going to be in when her friend finally realized she was going to need to talk to Troy in person, instead of reading letters he'd written.

That was definitely going to be an interesting conversation, Sharpay thought as she listened to the front door slam. As far as she knew, Gabriella hadn't thought about seeking Troy out anymore than she would realize that there was a black Jag sitting opposite their house and how conspicuous that was.

Her friend could be damn oblivious to things when she wanted to be.

Smiling a little at the thought, Sharpay turned around to look out the window again and noted that Gabriella's car had gone from the driveway. Glancing across the street, Sharpay noted absently that the black Jag was gone as well.

Which was strange because it usually hung around a lot longer than the forty-five minutes it had today. Usually, it was at least two hours. Maybe longer. At least, she figured it was seeing as it was gone whenever she got home from work in the afternoon.

Which was generally when Gabriella had calmed down enough to talk and act rationally again.

Sharpay's mug was halfway to her lips when the thought slammed into her like a freight train. Dropping her mug and spilling hot coffee over her abdomen and bench, Sharpay ignored the way the mug cracked loudly.

"You _son of a_ _bitch_."

* * *

Troy couldn't get the frail image of Gabriella out of his head.

Ever since he had seen her swipe at her wet cheeks as she'd read his second letter, all he could think about was how damn fragile she was. She was so damn fragile in a way she had never been before.

He remembered the only other time he'd ever thought she was fragile. It was on the courts in Albuquerque when she had told him how he always took a piece of the best part of her whenever he left.

He was pretty sure that she had no idea how breakable she'd been when she'd first tried to pick a fight with him and then told him – with that tremble in her voice that betrayed everything she'd said – how he took a piece of her with him every time he left.

Blowing out a breath, Troy took a deep breath and sank down into the warm water he'd submerged himself in a half hour ago.

She'd looked okay today. Not as frail. Just…fragile. Like she was holding herself together by sheer will and it made him hate what his letters were doing to her as much as he hated the fact that he had managed to land them in this position in the first place.

But how else was he meant to communicate with her when she'd made it so abundantly clear she'd wanted nothing to do to him the last time they'd been in the same room?

Admittedly, she'd been furious with him and he'd been fuming when she'd spat the words out but still, her sentiments had been perfectly clear.

And in a fit of rage he'd accepted the words as set in stone.

Which was something he'd chosen to remember when he'd formed this damn plan. His first plan had been to drive to San Jose and confront Gabriella with every single letter she'd written and everything she'd made him feel when he'd read them.

He'd figured that wasn't a brilliant idea after a nightmare about what she would do if he showed up on her doorstep.

Now he had this carefully constructed, binding plan that was becoming painful to execute because every time he closed his eyes all he saw was Gabriella crying as she read the letter, her fragility so painfully obvious he wanted to hold her until she was strong again.

Realizing he was running out of air, Troy kicked for the surface of the pool and knew it was time to get out when he broke the surface and his fingers were wrinkled.

Pulling himself out of the pool, Troy couldn't help but think back to Chad's face when he'd seen what Troy had done to the steering wheel of his precious Jaguar.

As he wrapped a towel around his waist and headed for his room he had to admit he hadn't meant to hit the steering wheel so hard that it dented. But he had and while he had been worried more about the fact that his hand was now blue and purple from the force of his punches, he still had to savour the look of abject horror on Chad's when he'd seen what had happened.

The laughter that had been released at Chad's face had eased the anger he'd felt at the entire situation since seeing her.

It still made him chuckle now as he slipped the key into the door and opened the room he was sharing with a now silent Chad.

"Dude, are you still not talking to me?"

Seeing his friend on the bed, focusing on CNN Sports made Troy want to laugh all over again. Because really, Chad's reaction was over the top and completely expected and it just made it all the more funny.

"Yes."

"Chad, it's not that big a deal. I promised that I'd get it fixed, didn't I?" Troy asked as he unwrapped the towel from around his waist and began to rub it through his hair.

"You didn't have to laugh. You know how much that car means to me." Chad muttered with a scowl, causing Troy to burst into laughter again as a knock on the door sounded.

"Chad, I promise you, one day you'll find something more important to you than a _car_."

Shaking his head at his friend, Troy reached out and pulled open that door as Chad sneered at him.

"_You son of a bitch._"

Troy swallowed.

"Hi Sharpay."

* * *

A/N: I know that it might seem strange that Gabriella wasn't in this chapter as much, but there's a reason for that and that'll be explained in coming chapters. Basically, I needed Sharpay to come into this chapter and I hope it wasn't as disjointed as I thought it was. Again, sorry about the lack of updates and I hope you enjoyed.


	13. Chapter 13: Shattered Heart

Disclaimer: I do not own 'High School Musical' or any related characters nor do I own Taylor Swift's lyrics.

A/N: Okay. So it's been a while. A long, long while. And I'm sorry. I really am. But life got in the way, as did two months in Europe and a laptop that decided to break down. Which is the short version of why I haven't updated in so long. I would give you all the long version but I think it would be just too long. A whole chapter, truthfully.

What's important is that I'm sorry and...I've finished planning the story so I know where it all goes from here!

Yay.

Anyway, I hope you guys will forgive me and I hope you enjoy this chapter!

* * *

_**The Letters Never Read**_

**Chapter Thirteen: Shattered Heart**

_Why would you wanna break a perfectly good heart?  
Why would you wanna take our love and tear it all apart, now?  
Why would you wanna make the very first scar?  
Why would you wanna break a perfectly good heart?_

_Perfectly Good Heart – Taylor Swift_

_San Jose, California – September 2008_

"He broke my heart."

Gabriella's voice was quiet as she spoke and the words were so unexpected that Sharpay bobbled the saucepan full of hot chocolate she was holding carefully over a hot flame.

"What?"

Placing the saucepan down on the flame, Sharpay quickly switched it off and turned around to face her friend, who was staring out the window in the kitchen that Sharpay had spent so little of her time in.

It had been two weeks since Gabriella had shown up on her doorstep, wet from rain and tears with only an 'it's over' to explain why she wasn't with the fiancé she had promised forever too.

In that two weeks, Sharpay had learned not to ask anything about what had happened between the two. When she had dried her friend, pushing her to change into warmer clothes and accept the mug of hot coffee she'd made, Sharpay had tried to ask what had happened, what had gone wrong. Instead of answering and telling Sharpay everything, Gabriella had clammed up. Instead of making no sense as she tried to explain it through a waterfall of tears, Gabriella had cried silently and she had been crying silently ever since.

Whatever had happened between the tennis star and the girl he loved was something the outside world was not privy too, no matter how compassionate the listener was.

Gabriella turned her head away from the window she was staring out and shrugged at Sharpay's incredulous stare.

"He broke my heart. So many different times. And he mended it too." She said and Sharpay raised an eyebrow at her words.

Mended it was not quite how she saw things.

"Gabriella, how could that jerk even mend you heart when he was always the one breaking it?" Sharpay asked, deciding that maybe this conversation was better had when she was sitting down opposite her friend.

Gabriella didn't look at her friend as Sharpay settled herself opposite the brunette. Instead, she kept her eyes focused on the threat of black clouds that had been coming in from a distance since she had woken up that morning.

"Because when you know exactly how to break someone's heart, you know exactly how to put it back together again and he knew. He may not have known he knew, but he always pieced my heart back together."

Sharpay wrinkled her nose at Gabriella's logic. The words were too romantic and the idea of them too similar to a fluffy, happily-ever-after, romance novel for her taste. The words were also touched with a naïve sadness that Sharpay had to wonder at. After all those other times, after walking out or away, did Gabriella seriously expect Troy to come back and piece her heart back together?

The thought infuriated her. Sharpay was a woman who had chosen to never rely on a man for anything, simply because she could rely on herself. In choosing that, she knew, she had also chosen to pick herself up after a broken heart – or something similar to it, because Sharpay knew she had never experienced what Gabriella was going through – and had never relied on a man, or anyone, really, to help.

So to hear naïve sadness coat a belief that the man her best friend loved was going to come back and put her back together incensed Sharpay because Gabriella _shouldn't_ have to rely on that thought, at all.

"Please don't tell me you think he's going to come back and make it all better." She snapped her tone harsh because of her anger.

She opened her mouth to ask again when Gabriella didn't reply and then snapped it shut when Gabriella drew her eyes away from the coming storm to look at her. No, she thought, it wasn't naïve sadness that she'd heard but a kind of weary resignation. It was in her friends eyes as she smiled sadly and Sharpay could only wish she knew more about what had happened then Gabriella would tell her.

"Do you remember San Francisco? A few years ago. He came back. After two years of not seeing him, he came back. He came looking for me, specifically. He was heading up the ranks, becoming more and more famous because of his tennis and I was growing up because I was at college and that's what you do." Gabriella said and Sharpay blinked, unsure where this conversation was going as Gabriella spoke.

"Okay." The blonde said slowly.

"He broke my heart for the very first time the summer when I first met him. Not because he wanted too, but because we didn't have a choice." Gabriella shook her head a little at the thought. "We didn't have a choice. And then, two years later he walked into the coffee shop where we all hung out and I saw him and those broken pieces healed until the next morning when I woke up and he was gone. Something broke and slashed at my heart deep enough so that it would scar." She paused, as if collecting her thoughts.

Sharpay smiled a little and had to unclench the fist that had formed as she was reminded of what a mess her friend had been the months after he had abandoned her in that hotel room.

"Go on."

"He called a year later and that gash stopped bleeding and just scarred." Gabriella turned her eyes back to the storm clouds. "It's a cycle, Sharpay. He does something or I do something and instead of my heart breaking, something cuts into it and it bleeds until he stops the bleeding and then it scars."

Sharpay heard the 'but' in her friend's voice.

"But?" She prompted gently.

Gabriella let out a raw breath, as if she was fighting back tears at what Sharpay wanted her to say.

"But this time, I think he'd done more than heal the scar and open a new wound." Sharpay saw the lone tear spill down Gabriella's cheek and felt completely useless at the words her friend spoke next. "This time I think he shattered a scarred heart, which used to be perfectly okay, perfectly good. And this time I don't know if he's going to be able to fix it or if he'd going to break the cycle and I'm going to be left to live with it the way I always did before he mended it."

Sharpay leaned forward to rest her hand on Gabriella's shoulder comfortingly, feeling more useless than she had since her friend had shown up on her doorstep two weeks ago.

"Gabi - " She started and was cut off.

"This time I don't even know _why_ we tore everything apart."

The rawness and undiluted pain in those words was enough to shatter Sharpay's own heart.

* * *

_San Jose, California - 2009_

"You, Bolton, either have a goddamn death wish coming here or are more of an imbecile than I originally thought!"

Troy stepped aside as Sharpay barrelled into their hotel room and rubbed a hand over his face wearily as he shut the door and turned to face the furious blonde who had invaded his life much sooner than anticipated.

"Actually, you're smarter than I originally thought." He said coolly and then raised an eyebrow at Chad. "Dude, can we get some privacy hear? I don't think you want to be another red flag for the bull over there."

"Oh, he doesn't need to leave because even if he was jumping up and down in bright red spandex this bull would still be gunning for you, Bolton." Sharpay snapped menacingly and Chad – who had opened his mouth with a look of abject horror on his face at Troy's suggestion – grinned at the blonde's words.

"You know, Troy, this could make up for denting the steering wheel." Chad said, his grin turning wicked as he shut off the television and settled down to watch a show he had no doubt was going to be entertaining.

"Bastard." Troy muttered and then turned his attention to Sharpay. "Want to clue me in on how you found me?" He asked.

Sharpay rolled her eyes. "_Please_. You've grown used to comfort where else would you stay but the most expensive hotel in the freaking city? I told the front desk I was your cousin when they asked."

Chad snorted. "Got you there, bro."

Troy shot him an icy look and then ran a hand through his hair. "Okay. And does - " Sharpay cut him off.

"Do _not _even go there right now, Bolton." Her eyes were flashing as she spat out the warning and Troy felt his temper spike.

"If you didn't want me to go there, why send the fucking letters?" He shot at her and Sharpay's eyes flashed again.

"Because I figured you'd come gunning for her once you'd finished the letters, not break her all over again!"

"Well, excuse me for ruining your reunion plan, Sharpay. But did you ever consider what I had to deal with when I read those letters?" Troy snapped and Sharpay laughed sharply.

"Right. Because you've been so torn up. Obviously, I mean, look how fast you reacted to her leaving. Look how fast you reacted to the letters."

Troy's own eyes flashed and then darkened. "Obviously, you didn't get the newsflash that this isn't exactly the simplest relationship you've ever known about."

"Hah. Of course you'd throw that out there. And of course I would be able to tell you that the simplest way to rectify was to go after her after you realized you'd screwed it up!"

"And that would have helped how? I would have still been mad and she would have still been fuming and that fight would have just been brought to San Jose."

Sharpay rolled her eyes. "Oh, so you thought about that, huh? What about a week after that? Or the week after that? You know what? I think that you were too mad to even care about chasing after her and that's why it's taken you six months to get your ass into gear and even now, you don't care enough to go and see her."

Chad, who had been watching the mounting argument with glee, felt the room temperature drop twenty degrees at Sharpay's vicious words and looked at Troy's face. Black, Chad thought to himself, blacker than anything he'd ever seen in his life and the idiot blonde had no idea what she'd just provoked.

Hell, if Troy could dent the steering wheel of his car, what was he going to break with that look on his face?

Sharpay couldn't see anything but red as she breathed loudly and stared at Troy who had lost any semblance of emotion and was staring at her with eyes that were so dark, they were black.

A smart woman might have stumbled over an apology, an even smarter woman would have stumbled over one as she backed away from the room but Sharpay was not thinking like a smart woman. She was thinking like a furious one who couldn't believe that the man that could piece her friend's heart back together was in town and unwilling to go and see the woman he'd come for. She was thinking like a furious one who had relived a painful memory as she'd approached Troy Bolton's hotel room and could only see the shattered look in Gabriella's eyes as she'd explained that having a shattered heart was part of a cycle and even the thought of that memory infuriated Sharpay even more.

And because she was thinking like a furious woman, she didn't hear warning bells go off at Troy's expression nor did she take note of the muscles quivering, ready to explode into violent action.

So when Chad grabbed her arm, Sharpay fought against the iron grip. "Let me _go_." She snapped at him as he dragged her away from his friend.

"And let Troy take a swing at you for saying something so completely ridiculous? Don't be stupid." He snapped back and Sharpay was about to tell him exactly what she would do to Troy if he even _tried _to take a swing at her when the sickening sound of bone on wood shot through the air.

Both head swung around at the sound and Sharpay felt Chad's grip go slack but had no urge to yank her arm away.

Troy had hit the top of the desk he'd stood near, shoulders heaving as he slammed his fist into the flimsy desk again. The wood splintered and Chad let go of Sharpay to cautiously approach his friend.

"Dude, don't."

The words were spoken quietly and Sharpay could only wonder if Troy had done this before until she realized that he _couldn't_ have because no-one had said something so deliberately harsh to him when he was teetering on the edges of an emotional abyss that Sharpay was only just beginning to see now.

Troy shrugged off the hand Chad had laid on his shoulder, fury still vibrating in him as well as hurt. "I'm going for a run before I actually destroy something."

Neither Sharpay nor Chad spoke as Troy found runners, shorts and a shirt, yanked them on in rapid succession and then left, slamming the hotel door shut behind him with a hint of the violence he was feeling.

For a moment, both stood in the vibrating air without speaking. Feeling a sense of trepidation, Sharpay opened her mouth to excuse herself when Chad beat her to speaking.

"You know, I figured I'd get a good show out of watching you tear into him. I figured maybe you'd tell him something that he needed to hear or even give him a hint on how she is. I didn't know you would be stupid enough to provoke his anger." Chad's words were low and the tone of them furious and Sharpay flared.

"Right. Because I'm meant to be afraid of the big bad Bolton. Not going to happen."

"You should be. You just provoked a man with a broken heart who's mad because he let her get away and desperate to get her back. And you didn't ever care. Are you so wrapped up in being mad for your friend that you skipped the part where a guy hurts too?" Chad demanded and Sharpay's anger deflated slightly at his words.

"Are you hearing yourself? If his heart was broken, he would have - "

"Life is not a Mills and Boon novel and no, he wouldn't have. She broke him just as much as he broke her and he was so mad that she'd walked away again, so mad that she'd chosen not to fight for it that going after her would have just been a disaster." Chad's words were harsh and his tone was reasonable and Sharpay flared again.

"Oh, so it's her fault? She walked so he got mad. She didn't fight for it. So he chose not to chase." As she snapped, Sharpay suddenly realized she had no clue what she was talking about and blinked. "Wait. What the hell are you talking about?"

Chad gave her an incredulous look. "You mean you don't know about the note?"

"What note?"

With growing apprehension Sharpay watched as Chad sighed. Then rubbed a hand over his face before demanding: "Do you even know what the fuck went down between those two?"

"Apparently not if you're standing there acting condescendingly!" She shot back; stung that he apparently knew something more about Troy and Gabriella's relationship then she did.

"Apparently not if you can say with a straight face that Troy didn't give a damn about Gabriella." Chad mimicked and Sharpay sighed at his words.

"Okay. Maybe it was wrong to say that." She admitted jerkily and Chad rolled his eyes. "Look, buddy, I want to know what's happening and what went down between those two but my friends not talking and you're not exactly helping. So, can you help with the gaps in my knowledge?"

Chad looked at the blonde in front of him and wondered if telling the blonde what happened between their friends was really going to help the situation now.

Then again, he thought, how was it going to make it any worse?

"Alright. Let's go to the café across the street." Better, he decided, to not have her here when Troy returned and he had a feeling telling her could take a while.

Sharpay didn't even have to think before she nodded and followed him out the hotel door.

"I'm Chad, by the way."

She glanced at him before remembering that she hadn't actually met Troy's best friend. Which was strange, considering how long he'd been friends with Troy and that he knew Gabriella.

"Sharpay." She replied.

"No shit." Chad grinned and Sharpay found herself smiling back even though she couldn't help but dread what he was going to tell her when they reached the café across the street.

* * *

Gabriella wondered why she had thought she was strong enough to go back to work when she clearly wasn't and it was so obvious to her students.

As she stepped outside into the midday sunshine, she took a deep breath and wished she'd spoken to her principle about more time off. She needed it and she knew she did.

Every letter that had come through was throwing her more and more off balance and the more off balance she was, the more she thought about them and the distraction had bled into her teachings.

Her older students hadn't really worried. But then again, she mused; they were her favourite class and knew enough about her to simply get on with the work that she had laid out for them and discuss it only when they were sure they had her full attention.

Her younger class didn't see it that way. When they knew she was off balance, they always seemed to send her reeling with snickers from the back, snide comments to the side, and smirks at the front. Though they were her least favourite class, she still tried.

Up until about two minutes ago, she thought in disgust.

That stupid boy just couldn't keep his mouth shut, could he? Gabriella thought. He had to go and make some smart comment about teachers and history that was aimed specifically at her and the whole class had to laugh, didn't they?

Oh, how she wished she hadn't gone off at them, she thought with regret.

They'd all be white when she had finished shouting. White because Miss Montez was meant to be one of the nicest teachers around, sure you made fun of teachers – it was high school, you were meant too – but you didn't provoke the nice ones into shouting so loudly, and so scarily that all the students could do was sit back and stare in shock mingled with fear.

White, she thought again with disgust, pure white.

She had never shouted like that in her entire career. Her method of getting the class to behave involved humiliating the instigator, guilt-tripping and pulling a firm tone out of nowhere when her students weren't behaving.

Shouting until she was hoarse and dismissing them was not a method but a good way to destroy the nice reputation and cause more trouble for herself.

"Gabriella? Are you alright?"

Gabriella couldn't help herself. She jumped and spun to face the vice-principle, who was looking at her with concern.

Jan Towers was in her fifties and had been vice at her school for longer than most people could remember. Her teaching record spoke for itself with the results every single one of her classes turned in and her motherly nature towards the students helped when it came to troublemakers. She was the type of teacher Gabriella herself had had and wanted to be like. Despite this, Gabriella nodded and forced a smile.

"Yes. I'm fine." She replied, forcing her voice to be calm.

Jan's brilliant green eyes peered over the top of her glasses and met her own and Gabriella knew that the vice-principle knew very well that she wasn't okay.

"Really? I heard you shouting at your freshman class and while they've been asking for a good tongue thrashing, I don't think they expected it from you. Neither did I, actually."

"It was nothing, Jan. They just caught me on a bad day. That's all." Gabriella tried to dismiss it but knew when Jan's eyes flashed that they teacher wasn't going to let it go.

"Gabriella, you are one of the better teachers at this school. You're one of them because you never let your bad days dictate how you act around the children, not even when they act like a bunch of snotty nosed two year olds. What I heard was not a bad day, it was something else entirely."

Gabriella swallowed hard at Jan's words and then swallowed again at the compassion in her colleagues eyes as Jan waited patiently for the story. As she opened her mouth, it occurred to her that this was the first time she'd ever felt compelled to say something about what was happening without being prodded by someone.

"I shouldn't have come back to work. I'm not in the right head space, and I knew it when I left my house this morning. But I still came because I needed a distraction." She said quietly.

"A distraction from what?" Jan asked gently.

Gabriella laughed bitterly. "My shattered heart. God. I haven't said those words in six months. And now I'm saying them again because there's nothing else _too_ say. And it's hurting more than ever because I'm suddenly finding out why we tore it all apart. Why those stupid scars have started bleeding all over again. Why we broke each others hearts."

Jan said nothing for a moment.

"A shattered heart, huh? Never thought it was going to be one of those."

Gabriella laughed again. "Neither did I. But what can you do? Its how I feel. Or more accurately, what the shards of my heart feel."

"Do you want to take more time off work? Because I can get you some. I don't know how long, but I can wrangle it." Jan asked gently and Gabriella swallowed at the offer, feeling vulnerable when she saw the compassion in Jan's eyes.

"I – I really shouldn't. And I won't. I need to work. Not cower because of it." Gabriella said, her words more assured than she felt.

"Well, only if you're sure. Just let me…Gabriella?" Jan's voice grew concerned as Gabriella eyes widened and her face turned to ash.

Gabriella hadn't really thought about where she walked when she'd stepped outside, but she wished she had as she took a step back and stumbled back into the side of the school.

The fencing that separated the school from one of the many streets it was surrounded by obscured the man who stood on the other side of road, wiping sweat off his forehead with the hem of his shirt, exposing a ribbed stomach as he pulled the shirt up.

It obscured him but it did not hide who he was when he dropped the hem of his shirt and glanced at the school opposite him before tentatively starting to jog again, presumably towards wherever he came from.

Her eyes followed his jogging figure until he was out of sight and then her back hit the brick wall and she covered her mouth with her hand.

"Oh, my God. Oh, my God." She all but whimpered into her palm and didn't notice Jan crouch down to her level.

"Gabriella? What's wrong?" The woman asked gently, smoothing her hand over Gabriella's hair in a comforting motherly gesture.

Gabriella didn't reply. She couldn't reply.

All she could think about was the fact that Troy had been standing opposite her thirty seconds before and the pieces of her shattered heart had quivered at the sight of him.

All she could think about was the pieces of her shattered heart that quivered at the sight of the man who had shattered it in the first place.

* * *

A/N: ...um, yeah. So, you know how you sometimes your mind just takes over? Yeah. That's what happened with that last part. I didn't plan for that, at all. But, hey, its moving the story along. So who am I to complain? And believe me, I'm not sure about that ending but well, I knew there wasn't going to be another letter in this chapter but something was going to happen and it turned out, something did. Was that okay though? I really don't know. As I said, it happened and now this story is in a whole knew ballgame. Anyway, I hope you guys enjoyed it!


	14. Chapter 14: Coming Undone

Disclaimer: I do not own 'High School Musical' or any related characters nor do I own Taylor Swift's lyrics.

A/N: Okay. I've been having so many computer troubles I'm not even kidding. Seriously. What computer doesn't have Word? Its stupid. But that's only the start and I'm sorry I haven't updated but computer troubles and work and exhaustion and it all just comes together to make my life difficult.

Anyway, be warned, this is a pretty intense chapter and I really like it but I would love to hear your opinions about it because it's one of the more difficult chapters I've written and I really hope I've done the emotions and situations justice with what happens. So, your opinions would be greatly appreciated but please don't feel pressured to write a review!

I hope you enjoy the chapter in any case!

* * *

**_The Letters Never Read_**

**Chapter Fourteen: Coming Undone **

_Hold on baby, you're losing it  
The water's high, you're jumping into it  
And letting go and no one knows  
That you cry but you don't tell anyone  
That you might not be the golden one  
And you're tied together with a smile  
But you're coming undone  
_

_Tied Together With A Smile - Taylor Swift_

Troy had known it was a bad idea to go running in San Jose.

Hell, he _hadn't_ been running in San Jose because he knew he was going to get completely lost. Which, he thought as he slowed down to look for familiar landmarks, was probably a bit stupid. He could find his way around so many of the European big city's - Paris, Rome, Barcelona - that wasn't it a little bit poor he had no idea around a city he lived near?

But he'd had to get out of that damn hotel room.

He'd known Sharpay was going to come barging in once she'd put the car and the letters into some sort of order. He'd been counting on it because he needed someone who could talk Gabriella into doing anything on his side. He'd even been expecting the accusations and insults but he hadn't been expecting the snide observation that maybe he didn't care about Gabriella. That maybe waiting six months for her didn't mean that he cared, it meant that he just didn't care enough.

But, goddamn it, he _cared_.

He knew so many people who thought he cared too much. Chasing after the same girl for nine years? Enduring fights, tennis being his number one priority and the countless girls that had offered him so much better deals then the one he had with Gabriella, most people would take a look at just the first one and leave. Throw up their hands and give up, refuse to fight for it because it was too hard. Too complicated. Too easy to leave at a wistful summer love.

And, perhaps for the first time since knowing Gabriella, Troy found himself thinking that maybe it would've been easier to leave at a summer love.

If he was going down that road then, Troy thought viciously, then maybe it would have been easier to leave it at a phone call, a one night stand, an acknowledgment that they'd both changed, one becoming untouchable, the other growing up. Maybe it would've been easier to simply collapse into a bed after the ATP World Finals instead of flying to San Francisco to see her. Maybe it would've been easier to have thrown the rest of the letters out instead of reading them and concocting this ridiculous plan to _keep_ Gabriella in his life.

Troy felt something strain at his thoughts, some tether he'd wrapped around everything to keep his emotions in place as he tried to fight for Gabriella and everything they could be.

He took a deep breath even as it strained some more and realized, belatedly, that he'd come to a dead stop outside some well used tennis courts.

Of course, he thought with a roll of his eyes, he'd get lost but end up at some tennis courts.

"Excuse me, sir? Are - are you Troy Bolton?"

The shy voice of a boy no older than eight tore Troy from his sarcastic thoughts and he pasted on the smile that always worked in these situations and for the first time in nearly ten years felt that maybe it wasn't enough anymore.

"Yep. That would be me." He crouched down to the shocked boy. "Hi. What's your name?"

The boys eyes widened at his offered hand and he quickly took it, holding onto it tightly as Troy shook his hand gently and refusing to let go even though he hadn't replied yet.

"I - I'm - my name's Joshua, sir."

Troy couldn't help the real smile as Joshua's chocolate eyes widened comically as he stuttered out his name.

"That's a really cool name, Joshua. Do you play tennis?"

The boy nodded earnestly. "Oh, yes. Every Wednesday. My coach says I've got a real good backhand and that I could be really good one day."

His eyes shining as he related the words to his hero caused a pang somewhere deep in Troy's chest as the tether stretched to a shade before breaking point. Hadn't he been only a little older than Joshua when his coach had said he could be something great? Hadn't he been as enthusiastic as the boy in front of him when he'd assured his parents that tennis was what he wanted?

What the hell had happened to him? If Gabriella hadn't come into his life would he still be as enthusiastic about the game that ruled his life? Would he wish that the sport he loved hadn't come between him and the woman he loved?

"That's really good, Joshua. Maybe I should come by one Wednesday and give you some pointers. Do you think I'd be allowed to do that?"

The smile that lit up the boys face squeezed at Troy's heart and he suddenly realized the pang wasn't just about losing a life to a sport and wishing he could remember why he loved it.

It was also about the fact that he wanted to have children. He wanted to be a father to a little boy with chocolate brown eyes who played tennis and had a real good backhand.

He wanted the damn _possibility_ of having a little boy with chocolate brown eyes and a real good backhand.

"You know what, Joshua? I'll try and come back next Wednesday, is that okay?"

"Yeah. Yes. That would be so cool. Will you sign my tennis racket? And show me how you do that shot down the line that makes people get real mad? Will you serve really quickly too? So we can see how good you are at? Please?" Joshua's hat began to fall off his head as he bounced with the rapid fire questions and Troy couldn't help but laugh.

He plucked the cap off the boys head and then resettled it. "Sure. To all questions. What time is your coaching session?"

Before Joshua could respond, a female voice cried out. "Joshua! Where are you?"

The boy sighed and rolled his eyes. "I'm over here, mom. Talking to Mr Bolton."

Troy rose to his full height as a frantic woman strode over from where she was standing and grasped her sons hand tightly.

"Don't you ever do that again Joshua Jackson! I was worried sick!" She scolded him, her other hand stroking down his shoulder and Troy swallowed as he tried to ignore the pang at the mothering.

Damn it all to hell and back, he _wanted_ to see that with his own child.

He wanted it to be Gabriella soothing their child.

He wanted to see the rings flashing on her left hand as she scolded their own child.

"Mom? What time is our session on Wednesday? Mr Bolton said he would come." Joshua asked his mother, unaware of the turmoil in his idol's thoughts.

"Oh, honey, it's around three and I'm sure Mr Bolton is too busy to come to your session."

Troy interrupted before Joshua could protest. "I'll see you next Wednesday at three then J-Man."

The boy's face lit up and Troy forced a smile, horribly aware that for the first time in a long time a smile wasn't enough anymore. Not for him anyway.

"Okay, bye Mr Bolton."

Troy waved slightly before turning on his heel and heading in a direction he hoped would take him away from his thoughts and the terrible realization that he was about to fall apart at the seams.

Damn it. Damn it. Damn it. He thought furiously. He wanted a child, he wanted a wife, he wanted a damn _life_.

And the one person he knew could give him that he had allowed himself to push away for absolutely no goddamn reason.

He hated himself for it.

Because he wasn't the damn golden one that Joshua thought he was and he wasn't even tied together with a smile that never failed him anymore.

He had no fucking clue what he was or who he was or even if everything he'd ever wanted was really _everything_ he wanted.

Troy turned a corner sharply and breathed a sigh of relief when he came face to face with his hotel. He breathed an even bigger one when he saw the liqueur store.

It wasn't a solution and it was a stupid idea and Troy knew it all as he walked into the store and headed for the beer isle.

But goddamn it, if he was going to come undone. If he was going to show himself and the world he might not be the golden one. If he was going to let the tether break, then he was going to get drunk as he did.

Because when he was drunk, it was so much easier to drown in the water that he couldn't swim in. So much easier to let go.

When he was drunk, it was so much easier to come undone.

_

* * *

_

Gabriella couldn't breathe.

Her whole world - her whole, fragile world - had just shattered uncomprehendingly and the air she'd been forcing herself to breath in the past six months had started coming in short supply.

He had been standing opposite her. Wiping sweat from his brow and all she could think was '_he's here_'. How could he be here? How was it possible for him to even know that she was living here?

She'd wanted to make a sound. She'd wanted to scream, shout and confront him. She'd wanted to scale the fence, run across the road and wrap herself up in him and never, ever let go.

She'd wanted to do _something_.

But she hadn't.

Instead, she'd collapsed against the side of the school, shaking uncontrollably and unable to listen to anything her vice-principle had said. She still didn't know what Jan had been saying to her as her precious air supply had been stolen and her heart had jump started at the sight of him before shattering all over again as he'd run the other way.

Her mind had stopped functioning at all when he'd disappeared from sight and, as she opened her front door, she didn't know how she'd arrived at her house. She had some vague recollection of Jan pulling to her feet and gently steering her towards a different car, still speaking in a soothing tone Gabriella assumed worked well on students not women who had seen the only man that could shatter their hearts and then pull them out of the mess they'd created.

The ride in the car had been blurry, she was sure that it had been silent with Jan glancing at her worriedly every chance she got and Gabriella resolutely staring out the window trying to comprehend what she had seen. Who she had seen. What it all _meant. _

Except she couldn't comprehend it.

For the first time in her entire life, her brain, her intelligence, her logic had all failed her. The one thing she had always relied upon to make sense of everything - Troy leaving every single time, accepting letting him back into her life all over again, the fight neither remembered - was failing her and she could do nothing except accept that there was nothing to make sense of.

The letters she'd been receiving, Sharpay's reaction this morning - Gabriella could only assume that it had something to do with who she had just seen - seeing him was jumbling in her head until all she could do was close her eyes and wish that she could grasp onto one thing and then pull everything into order.

The way she had always done.

As she slammed the door shut and waited to hear a car drive off - she'd figured that Jan would wait until she was inside - Gabriella tried to take a deep, cleansing breath. A deep breath with the precious little air she had left and try to begin rationalizing what she had seen and what it all meant.

Because this time, it didn't just feel like she couldn't breathe.

This time it felt like she was drowning under an ocean of things that she couldn't understand.

She leaned against the hardwood door and dropped her purse to the ground as she closed her eyes and tried to force away the uncomfortable pressure in her chest she knew had everything to do with what was crashing down around her in a huge wave waiting to take her under.

It didn't work. All she could see when she closed her eyes was the way Troy had wiped his brow, the way his face had seemed more haggard than it had six months ago, the way she could _see_ that he had suffered too.

And, God damn it, she'd wanted to believe so desperately that he _hadn't_ suffered.

It had helped to believe that he hadn't suffered the way she had when they'd finally decided to call it quits without any words spoken. She'd rationalized it, twisted it around so that whenever she thought about him being in pain she could remind herself that _he _had always been the one to walk away first. _He_ had been the one to push her away and make stupid decisions regarding her and their relationship. _He _had been the one that had been so damn untouchable all the time. _He_ had been the one to start the argument that had ended it all.

She'd wanted so desperately to feel better, Gabriella knew she'd tried to blame it all on him.

And it had worked for a while, too.

Sharpay had never questioned her about her absolute belief in that it was all on him - a best friends prerogative, she figured - and Gabriella suddenly wished that the blonde had.

Because she'd known that it wasn't all Troy's fault. There was so much she could have done to show him that she appreciated every extra mile he'd run for her. Every flight he'd taken to come and see her. Every halting sentence spoken that showed her that he cared. Every step he'd taken to show that he was fighting for what they could be.

And now everything was coming down to what if's, to maybes, to should've, would've, could've and really how fair was that?

"It's _not_ fair."

For the first time in six months, Gabriella suddenly found herself angry. She suddenly found herself downright furious.

For the first time in six months Gabriella felt like she was truly about to lose it and could do nothing but stand there, leaning against a door, with her eyes closed wishing that she could rationalize what seeing Troy meant. What the last six months had meant. How lamenting on them and blaming Troy for everything really helped anything at all.

Gabriella wasn't quite sure when the wave that had only been fueled by everything she'd just tried to lay out and figure crashed down around, all she knew was for the very first time in such a long time, she _felt. _

And instead of fighting the wave that threatened, instead of trying to catch her breath and rationalize everything that had happened and everything she knew was about to happen, she dove straight into the coming waters and screamed.

It was so easy to scream.

It was so easy to come undone.

It was so easy to let go and lose the tenuous grasp she'd retained on her life.

As she opened her eyes, she wasn't aware of the fact that she had tears rushing down her cheeks in an exquisite waterfall that had just broken free and she wasn't focused on the fact that she was moving to an unknown destination.

As she rushed forward, she stopped only momentarily to yank off her shoes and throw them at the wall, _hard_.

The violence fed the emotion breaking free and Gabriella simply continued, yanking of her shirt and throwing it away from her with as much force as possible. Her skirt came next and she had the satisfaction of twisting it into a ball and hearing a lamp shatter as it collided with the skirt and then the floor. She tore her stockings as she yanked them off and refused to care about the fact that they were her favorite pair.

Instead, she shoved the door to her room open and felt satisfaction as it slammed against the wall and the sound of plaster echoed through the room.

Oh God, she'd never been this _furious_.

She stalked to her wardrobe and threw it open, her eyes zeroing in on the boxes that were stacked neatly at the back. To get to them, she simply tore every shred of clothing out of her closet and threw it all haphazardly around the room. Her shoes went next and she could only smile grimly when one of them collided with her overhead light and shattered it as well.

Something else could shatter for once.

It took her so little time to reach the back of her closet and she grasped the boxes that were stacked there. With a strength borne of fury she yanked them towards her, her face dark as she tore off the masking tape and pulled the flaps open.

"Its. Not. Enough. Anymore."

The picture frames went first. Thrown across the room and falling to the floor as the next one met the same fate.

"He can't do this to me."

Photo albums were torn apart with bare hands as she yanked page after page out and shredded them before throwing them in the air so they returned like confetti.

Jewelry was thrown next.

Shirts were attacked with scissors and then scattered around the room.

Mementoes were destroyed with a single minded intensity.

The Eiffel Tower figurine she'd always loved was thrown through her bedroom window.

The tennis tickets, passes and programs were all piled together with the intent of being burned when she was done destroying everything else.

Without thought or process, Gabriella found herself destroying every single piece of the life she had led with Troy with an intensity that was only related to uncontrollable fury at _everything_.

When she had shredded the last box, when the fury quieted enough for her to realize she had done it all with tears running down her face, Gabriella looked at the destruction she had wreaked on what had been her life and could only feel all consuming grief as she looked at what she had done to herself, to Troy, to _them._

"It's not fair." She repeated, her voice wavering as she looked at the ruin of her life.

Then she gave into the grief that had replaced the fury.

In the middle of the ruin of her life with Troy, Gabriella dropped to the floor and curled into a ball. Hiding her face in her knees, she wrapped her arms around her legs and cried.

She cried because she knew that she wouldn't tell anyone about the tears, just the fury.

She cried because the wave had crashed down around her and instead of avoiding it, she'd jumped in.

She cried because she was letting go and she wasn't so sure that anyone would know.

And she cried because she knew that she was never going to be tied together with a tremulous smile again because she'd spent the last six months smiling and now it was too late to stop herself from accepting the full force of emotion that she'd allowed to be unleashed upon herself.

* * *

When Sharpay stepped into her room hours later, Gabriella was curled up amongst the destruction she'd wreaked upon the room and could only sigh in sympathy at the sigh of her friend curled on the floor.

Curled as if she was desperately trying to ward off everything that had happened to her in the past nine years.

"Oh, sweetie. I'm so sorry." Sharpay whispered as she found her duvet hidden beneath clothes and spread it over her sleeping friend.

As she ignored the debris surrounding her friend - knowing that they would deal with it in the morning - Sharpay could only hope that Troy's plan was going to be enough for them to come back to themselves.

And each other.

* * *

The shattered beer bottle was Chad's first clue to his friends state when he stepped into the hotel room.

With careful movements, Chad stepped around the shattered glass and headed towards the balcony that he knew Troy occupied and could only wonder why Troy got drunk whenever he was close to coming undone.

As he stepped out onto the balcony, Chad took note of the bottles of beer heaped upon the flimsy table and wondered how much his friend had had to drink as he moved around the table to reach his friend, who's head was propped against his hand.

"Oh, man, why do you do this to yourself?" He asked softly when he saw that Troy was passed out.

It startled him when Troy's eyes flew open at his question.

"Because it's easier than coming undone."

Chad let out a quiet sigh at his friends words as Troy's eyelids dropped back down again and wished that his friend didn't have to come undone in the first place.

* * *

A/N: Phew. That was freaking intense. Like, seriously. Who knew? I can't believe I just wrote all of that. How was it? I'm sorry but they had to come undone before anything else could happen and I'm really kind of amused with Gabriella's way of coming undone. Troy on the other hand? He just seems like the type to get drunk and then figure everything else out the next day. And the children thing. I just thought...well, that Troy would have imagined it. He seems like the type of guy to want children. Or at least the possibility of them, at least. And it seems they're happy ever after is a long way away. Fear not, it'll work out. And hey, it means a longer story for you guys doesn't it? I hope you enjoyed.


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